SOG EP 1621 BONUS: “95% of Serotonin is Made in the Gut!” How The Food You Eat is Tied to Anxiety & Depression

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11So when you have inflammation, because your gut is out of whack or is not healthy, it's going to cause you in some ways to feel lower energy, anxiety, depression, or some type of, I guess, symptom that doesn't cause you to be your best self. That's what I'm saying. A hundred percent. And I think that these can exist on an entire spectrum. This could be a bad day. Yes. Right. but it could also be something that is more chronic and clinical, such as major depression. Yes. And like for me personally, like this is where my personal journey started, was that I was in a bad place with my own health.

0:50Really? And one of the issues that I had was I was depressed. Really? Yeah. And I just wanted to be by myself. And this was when you were in medical school before or after? So I was in my gastroenterology training. If you looked at me on paper, you thought that everything was perfect. Yet there I was laying under a blanket in a dark room watching reality television. Wow. Like all of us do when we're depressed. It's like, I've been there. I've been there. How many years ago was this? This was 12 years ago. 12 years ago. So you're in medical school. I was in, no, so I graduated medical school in 2006.

1:24So we're talking about roughly 2012 now. Okay. So I was a board certified internal medicine doctor. I'd finished my internal medicine training. I was the chief resident in Northwestern. Wow. And then I moved on to the University of North Carolina. I was on a grant from the NIH. And I was studying both at the School of Public Health, which is like one of the top three schools of public health in the country. I was doing that and working during the day as a gastroenterologist in the hospital. And I was miserable. Wow. And my life was in a bad place. I also had high blood pressure, high cholesterol.

1:57From a mood perspective, tons of anxiety, high levels of depression. Again, like I just wanted to wait in a dark room by myself under a blanket and be left alone. That's all I wanted to do. But you had made it. You were at the top of your field. You were an expert. You were, you know, leading a hospital in the department. So why do you think you were sick even though you were a doctor? All I know is this, that I did not want my own medicine in that moment. Oh. The things you were prescribing to others. The things that I was prescribing to others and that I had been trained by great doctors to do.

2:31I didn't want that in that moment. Wow. And so the tables had turned. Now I'm the patient. And I needed something to help me. And I tried to exercise my way out of this. So I'm going to work out harder. I'm a type A. Right, right. So I go hard. Sess. Oh. Hardcore. 45 minutes of weight training a day. Hit training. Cardio, yeah. Jump on the treadmill for either a 5 or a 10K. Wow. Or jump in the pool, because I was in North Carolina, and do 100 laps. Dang, that's intense. Yes. Just triathlon training. I grew stronger or faster or whatever athletic measure you want, but I still felt unwell. Really?

3:10Maybe you felt a little bit better, but... I felt a little bit better, but I really felt unwell. And you had a big gut. I had a big gut. Really? Yeah. And I needed something to change. And the weird and bizarre thing about it is that I grew up, I come from a humble place in upstate New York, and I was raised on junk food. Yeah. And this is the way I ate for 75 % of my life. And the food that was glorified in our house, how could that possibly be the cause of my problems? The food that brought us love and connection and intimacy and fun and play. Oh, yeah. Get home from school, play some hoops, wear Mario Kart, fire up the grill, couple dogs, right?

3:50Like a dream. Yeah. Summer barbecues. Let's go. It was fun, and I loved it, but it caught up to me. Wow. It caught up to me in my early 30s. And so I needed something to change. And the thing that changed for me was that I eventually looked in the mirror. It was actually by meeting my wife, who, like, here we are, you know, more than 10 years later. We have four kids together. But in this moment, we're going on a first date. And she ate very differently than me. Really? Yeah. And I had never seen anything like this. How did she eat? We were at, so we were in, you know, North Carolina. Yeah. Right?

4:24They didn't have all the diversity back then. No. Of foods. Well, and you look at the menu and my wife said to the waiter, she pulled them aside and she goes, can you get me a plate? And on that plate put collards and black eyed peas and okra and some mashed potatoes. Wow. All right. And so she had them arrange a plant plate. And I was like, who are you? Yeah, yeah. What is going on here? Can I get some steak or chicken or yeah? I got my usual pork chop. Uh-huh. So, look, I'm not saying that's wrong. What I'm saying is that my diet needed an overhaul. Uh-huh. Right? There needed to be changes.

5:04Seeing that, she opened my mind because she looked amazing. Right? She looked amazing. She seemed to be healthy, have everything going for her, and it seemed to be effortless. And here I am grinding out an hour and a half of exercise every day. With a gut still. With a gut still. Wow. Right? But it was enough to open my mind. And so there was this one day where I was going to go to Hardee's and get my usual$5 deal where they can get you like 2 ,500 calories for five bucks. So bad. You know, it's so good. It's amazing in the moment. Yeah, yeah. For about two seconds, you feel great. Then you feel sick.

5:37And then you just want to get on some sweats and lay on the couch and make weird noises. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So instead, I went home. Look, I'm a single guy in my 30s. I am not going to cook a gourmet meal. Right. Right? So I pulled out a blender and I threw a bunch of stuff in there. And that worked. And I made like a 40-ounce smoothie. And I instantly felt like something that had been missing from my life was in that cup. When you feel really unwell, you just want to feel better. Yes. And so that made me feel better. And when it happens, it's enough to make you say, well, I want to feel that way again.

6:14And so I came back the next day and I did it again. And that started the process for me of changing my diet. And once I started to change my diet, the weight melted off my body. Really? My confidence, because I had extremely low self-esteem. But you were in the top of your field as a medical doctor and GI and running a hospital division. Didn't matter. All the degrees. You could shower me with the degrees and the awards and all these things. And I felt good for a day. And then I went back to feeling like trash. Why do you think you felt so insecure or low self-esteem? I think that the way that we feel about ourselves is affected by what's going on inside of us.

6:51Really? Yeah, I do. Wow. I absolutely do. There are labels that we can apply, whether or not a person has a clinical condition, major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, whatever you want it to be. But there are also aspects of who we are that are very human that maybe we don't have a label to apply to it, but we all experience it. Right? And that is self-esteem. And that is energy levels. Yes. And things of this variety. and I was in a dark place. Making that change completely radically transformed my health and because I had that moment, I'm a medical doctor and I care a lot. So I felt like I have no choice.

7:29I have to bring this into the clinic and so I started bringing this into the clinic to treat my patients and I saw radical transformations among people with irritable bowel syndrome and acid reflux and Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. I see these radical transformations. I eventually got to a point in 2016 where I was like, this story, like people deserve to hear this. And it should not be pre-required that you come to see Dr. B as your doctor in order to hear this story. You should be able to hear this no matter where you are. And that's what motivated me to get out there and start doing this.

8:01Wow, man.

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9:03Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.