The Power of MIND & BODY Connection | Shawn Stevenson EP 308

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

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1:12It's much more difficult to think the thoughts that we want to think when we don't feel well, right? When we don't feel well, we start to think bad thoughts. So much of our biology is driving our lives, you know, how we feel. But this is the thing. We can think externally of our biology. We can change our thoughts and change what's happening with our biology instantly. Because every thought that you think has correlating chemistry that's released. Really? So right now. You think about your wife. Yeah. In a loving way. So I'm going to start releasing a little bit of oxytocin. Uh-huh. You know, a little bit of, maybe a little dopamine.

1:44You know, a little serotonin. In the brain. Yeah. Which then releases. But it also depends on the thoughts as well. But for example, we have a thought where something bad is happening right now where we're thinking about, you know, maybe we're worried about something that we care about. Maybe they've been in an incident of some sort. Maybe we heard some news about it, but it's not true. OK, so maybe we heard that somebody that we love got into an altercation and we're just like, you know, really upset, like whatever. And we can start to produce these chemicals associated with that stress. So much more cortisol.

2:15Right. So a lot of people know about cortisol. Cortisol is not a bad guy. We've talked about this. Right. Right. Right. It's a big part of it. Too much of it. Consistently. Too much hurts you. Especially and chronically, we start to release all these neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, hormones, all driving us towards worry, fear, anger, regardless if the situation is real or not. Right. That's the rub. We make it up. So we can think external. We can think beyond our current circumstances and change our biology. But if our biology is in a tough place, it's harder to keep trying to do that. When we bring in an abnormal amount of sugar, like the way that humans evolved, we didn't have access to sugar like that.

2:51You know, if you come across a beehive or something, you're going to risk getting stunned to get some of that. All right. We've always had a pankering for sugar, like through our evolution. We go towards fruit. Yeah, we'd go for those things, especially. But also is available for some cultures only certain times a year, for example. And so you would rack up on it as well. The human brain itself, if we think about the blood-brain barrier that protects the brain and only allows in certain things, certain nutrients. It only has gates for certain gases like oxygen, for water. Only certain nutrients get into the brain.

3:26The brain has its own exclusive diet. But there are a lot of sugar gates. Your brain will gladly sop up half of the sugar that you take in in a meal. There are these protein gates that allow the sugar to transfer over through the blood-brain barrier into the brain itself. many of the neurons run off of glucose. So your brain is like, look, give me that. We got stuff to do. Let me take all of it. But what happens is over time is it starts to create insulin resistance in the brain as well, right? So this is one of the biggest issues facing our world today. And if we get into the conversation about inflammation, neuroinflammation, I believe is the most troubling issue that we're facing as a society.

4:04It's a hidden overlooked issue because the brain is so protective. We don't really know that this is going on until oftentimes it's too late because the brain itself, we talked about the symptoms of inflammation, pain, swelling, burning. The brain itself doesn't have pain receptors. So your brain can tell you about pain in your pinky toe, but pain within the brain itself, it doesn't have pain receptors. Inflammation in the brain is one of the primary causative factors of obesity. And obesity is a causative agent for neuroinflammation. So they both hurt each other. So you're getting into this double-edged sword or vicious circle.

4:41We tend to downplay or belittle people who are struggling with obesity, for example, and not knowing how many programs out there are telling you we need to target the inflammation in your brain for you to get well, for your metabolism to heal. I lost my grandmother, the love of my life. Her and my grandfather were an entity, you know? And so all I saw was love. All I saw was them, like, his arm around her and just affectionate. She loved him literally to death. And so he ended up having multiple open heart surgeries. He was hunting. He was foraging. Very like outdoor guy, but he was living under chronic stress in the city.

5:18He was a country boy. When he was noting like, okay, you got a high blood pressure. He also was very angry guy, you know, but he dealt with anger. Yes. But not towards us, you know, but just his conditions that he came up around. The physician based on his preliminary blood work was like, okay, you got to cut the fat. You need to switch out that butter and start to have this partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is country crock. And he went from having some blood work issues to having a heart attack. Oh, man. To having open heart surgery. To him dying early. So we're going from something that's, quote, natural that humans have been having for centuries to something that was brand new and invented.

5:55You know, and all the fat. I remember my grandmother getting him like the low-fat peanut butter. And I remember once I got older, I went to their house. I looked at it. It was fully hydrogenated vegetable oil in the peanut butter. And so it's like it's basically exposing it to more hydrogen to extend the shelf life of it. It kind of makes like a vegetable oil plastic out of it. She was around for a while. She was there at my wedding. I felt like she stayed to make sure that I was in good hands. Wow. But shortly after that, she died from an overdose. She was depressed I didn't know. I lost the love of my life outside of my wife to depression.

6:31and you know when he left here like really her identity was so tied to him you know she loved him so much but also her health was going down as well and i'm just now really starting to hit my stride in understanding this field and helping a lot of people i didn't know like my grandmother had diabetes she had this she had this that issue she had like the whole pill cabinet oh man and for me growing up in it it was normalized and yet retreating symptoms when we're not in a good state of health, the depression, it can be more invasive. It can be harder to deal with. They come together. So hard to deal with.

7:05It's hard to get out of it. Yeah. My point that I want to share is when we're venturing into these outward states of inflammation, because even our fat cells themselves are an inflammatory factor. They're putting out a distress signal that's letting your body think in a sense that you're infected and the fat cells themselves are creating inflammation. Right. And if we talked about that again, that systemic chronic inflammation, It's just literally checking all boxes for a bad event to take place, whether it's depression, heart attack, stroke, dementia, the list goes on and on and on. And a big catalyst for this, about 400 ,000 people die each year from obesity-related conditions.

7:42And it's just a footnote.

7:46How do we love and accept people for where they're at without shaming them, but also encourage them to improve the quality of their health so that their brain gets bigger and healthier, so that they can live longer, so that they can perform better? Because from what I'm hearing, obesity is not something that's going to make you live longer and healthier. We've been inundated with an idea that thin is better for many years. We've been inundated with an idea that you've got to look a certain way, have a certain complexion, certain eye color, whatever the case is to be the epitome of what beauty is.

8:19Humanity is so beautiful, so diverse. So it depends on your genetics, on how much weight you carry and how healthfully you can carry it. You maintain your insulin sensitivity, the health of your brain, the longevity, the list goes on and on. There are different, this is one of the things that I really brought to the fold with Eat Smarter is your unique metabolic fingerprint. And a part of that metabolic fingerprint is honoring your genetics, right? And so with that said, shifting the culture right now to honor our diversity and our variation of what beauty looks like and not having this idea that having some body fat is something that's wrong or ugly.

8:55That's an absolutely terrible thing. And we have to understand that if you have insulin resistance, you're pre-diabetic or you're diabetic or you have heart disease or you have neural inflammation that we're talking a little bit about, you have allergies and asthma, list goes on and on and on. advanced arthritis, all these different conditions, all these underlying things that can take place, this is going to, in many ways, destroy your quality of life. And we want you to be healthy and a unique expression of what beauty is. Yes. That's it. You don't have to be perfect and have a six-pack and have a certain amount of body fat.

9:29But if you want to live happy and healthy and not feel these kind of mental health issues as well, this will help that if you're healthier physically. Absolutely.

9:47Thank 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.

10:37Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.