The Critical Key to Activating Self-Healing | Shawn Stevenson EP 591

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

0:11You don't truly know anything until you've done it yourself. Little did I know that my story really was coupled with a change in the way that I was sleeping helped to transform my body and my health. So when I was 20 years old, I was diagnosed with something called degenerative bone disease and degenerative disc disease. So the disc in between the vertebrae and my spine were breaking down. And my first physician told me I had the spine of an 80-year-old. and I was 20, right? So when I was 15 years old, I ran a 4.540. At track practice, I was doing a 200 meter time trial. And as I was coming off the curve into the straightaway, my hip broke.

0:45Broke? Just, I broke my hip. So random, right? You know, I just thought I pulled a muscle, you know, being a hard-headed guy, I just kept coming to practice for a couple of days until my coach made me go. And I got a scan done and there was my iliac crest, like the tip of my hip bone had just broken off. And so standard of treatment, ultrasound, NSAIDs. Yes. ice stem ice crutches for a couple weeks got to get out of class early yeah so i thought it was cool but nobody stopped to ask how did this 15 year old kid's hip break and this is something usually reserved for people when they're older you know and um generally people think that people fall and break their hip but in reality they break their hip then fall right and that's kind of what was happening to me so i was so malnourished that my bones were just breaking down rapidly it wasn't until five years later when i got that diagnosis being an aspiring athlete it just kind of made my whole world come crashing down.

1:34Very scared, you know, especially getting the diagnosis that there's nothing that can do about it. And this was an incurable condition, according to my physician. I was smart enough to get multiple opinions, but it was the same story. So two and a half years went by until things changed. And I definitely dip into a state of depression for sure, you know, kind of mingled around in that and gained about 50 pounds of unsexiness. and I was fluffy version of myself man just was definitely off track in my life but ultimately things changed when man I just really decided to get well I got the last note from the last physician I saw and he said the same thing the other ones did and it's just like if I don't change my life now I'm never gonna change and most people never make the decision to get well that's the issue you know it's like I'm gonna try like you I'm gonna try to hit the New York times bestseller list no this is done you know so when you make a real decision about something you know it's from the latin day meaning from and kai deer which means to cut so you cut away the possibility of anything else and so i made a decision to get well and that really drove me into when i initially went to school it's so funny taking a pre-med track you don't have to take nutrition but i just happened to take nutrition the first semester i remember it's so clear there's a big auditorium style classroom and the teacher walked in but his belly came in first wow i was like oh he's gonna teach the nutritionist yes it's funny when you see a big doctor you know it's like just overweight and trying to tell you prescribe you something about your health you're like how it's kind of ironic in a way but you know the thing is these are generally really great people and they're doing what they're teaching yeah what they were taught too and a lot of people don't know this but a lot of nutrition programs in colleges are funded by general mills you know so there's a vested interest to get people to eat like you know It's the bottom of the pyramid, right?

3:24Which is the number one kind of glycemic loading food, you know, the highest spiking food, which is a tragedy. You know, so people are just chronically elevating their blood sugar, which is keeping insulin turned on, which is keeping them storing fat. You know, really simple thing. I think I heard recently that the government just put out an updated version. My plate. Right? They just put out an updated version of saying, well, actually, you're not supposed to put this much grains or whatever it is, like they used to say as a staple. slightly different but still there's a lot of work to be done but with the podcast world with what's going on online millions of people are getting connected to this information every year and changing the way that they're eating and so for me man it was were you just eating a lot of sugar yourself before i was on the college diet so i would crush a large pizza by myself on a regular basis uh mcdonald's breakfast if i got up in time you know that's how i was living man i had no idea that food matters no vegetables no fruits those are my life rarely would a veggie pass my lips yeah exactly really you don't know what you don't know and at that time i didn't know that there was a difference with food i just thought if you can eat it it's healthy of course and that's what a lot of people kind of fall into that that reality you know and so once i understood and by the way i asked my first doctor i don't know to this day if it was like my spirit animal or like my future self jumped into my body but i asked him does this have anything to do with what i'm eating you know this disease that i had and he looked at me he just cocked his head and like shook his head he's like this has nothing to do with what you're eating really he's like you were born with this this is something you just have to deal with i'm sorry it never sat right with me because he told me this has nothing to do with what i'm putting in my mouth but then he wrote me a prescription to put some drugs in my mouth right it's a nocebo effect which is giving somebody a negative injunction saying there's nothing you can do about this or you know you've got one month to live and seeing people who walk into the hospital are wheelchair bound within a day after getting a you know terminal illness diagnosis right and so the power of our minds is very powerful man I'm a very analytical person by nature like I mentioned there was basically three things I did number one I changed the way I was eating you know funny enough number two I started to move again and it's shocking how many people are diagnosed with something and the doctor tells to be careful, don't do anything, bed rest.

5:37Your body requires movement in order to heal itself. So I started to exercise again. And the third thing was... So not actually resting requires movement. Yes. Is that true? There's this crazy study, and I'm actually mentioning it in the book, and it was done on horses. And a racehorse can be potentially millions of dollars, the value. Yeah, of course. And if they break a bone, that's grounds for the animal to get put down, quote, put down. Yes. And so there's a really vested interest in keeping that horse's bones healthy. And so with the study, they had the horses start taking calcium and other supplements to increase the bone density.

6:09And there was some change, but there was even more change, more radical change if they walked the horses and gave them the supplements. This is because your body really assimilates nutrients through movement. When you really move your body, it's actually turning on activating biochemical pathways for your body actually assimilate stuff. If you have an acute situation where, you know, you just got hurt, take a couple days off. But then from there, you need to do what you can. A little bit of movement at a time. Right. Do what you can. Here's the thing. This is so cool, guys. I started to ask the right question.

6:42You know, questions are so powerful. So I asked, what is my spine actually made of? And then dug into the research. And I was shocked. Because when you think of your bones, what's the first mineral or nutrient you think of? I think of calcium. I don't know. Exactly. I'm ignorant, though. No, this is where everybody lives, the majority of us. There's like 200 other factors that are equally as important. That's just the big marketing one. Right. And so there's things like magnesium, silica. I needed vitamin C to help to regenerate tissues. I didn't know that. Sulfur-bearing amino acids, all these interesting things I'd never heard of.

7:14And no way was I getting that via Papa John's and Sunny Delight. So I changed the way that I was eating. And so I started to look for the foods that had those things in there. And then there was a radical transformation in my health. So the last piece was sleep, rest and recovery, man. When I started to do all this good stuff for my body and training again. And again, I just started where I could. I started off on an elliptical, then a stationary bike, walked, picked up the weights again. And I naturally fell into a normal sleep pattern. Six weeks later, man, after making that decision, I lost 28 pounds.

7:47The pain I'd been experiencing every day for two and a half years was gone. Ultimately, about nine months later, I got a scan done. and I had two herniated discs that retracted on their own. Wow. I lost three-fourths of an inch in height, and I grew half an inch back. Wow. Which was crazy, right? And the degeneration was starting to essentially be reversed. And the last physician I worked with, he was just standing there looking at the picture, you know, the MRI. It's just like, wow, son, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. And even when I went to get a scan done, I already knew I was well. It was just kind of an affirmation.

8:29Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple podcast right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:19Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.