The 5 Pillars That Will Transform Your Health In 2026

25:28What foods are those? Sugar and starch. Basically anything that turns to sugar in your body is seen as a biological stress. Even if you think you're happy and relaxed while you're eating it, the consequences in your body are just like those of when you're attacked by a mugger or you're being chased by a tiger. The real physiologic responses that happen in relation to our daily lives are no different depending on what the stress is. So whether you're running from a tiger or being upset with your spouse or you imagine somebody's mad at you and they're really not, the stress response is the same.

26:08In fact, stress is defined as the real or imagined threat to your body or your ego. So it could be a real threat to your body like a tiger chasing you or it could be an imagine threat to your ego. Maybe you think your boss is mad at you and it's going to fire you, but actually doesn't think that at all and wants to give you a raise. You have the thought, the thought creates a stress response. So our thoughts create our biology and we have to learn how to manage our minds in order to manage our biology. And so let's talk sort of a little bit about diet again, because what we found from the studies is that when you eat food, it's not all the same.

26:43Food is information. It's not just calories. And the information in processed food and starch and sugar increase our stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. And I remember one study, they looked at overweight kids, I think boys, and they, teenage boys, and they gave them three different breakfasts, an omelet, steel-cut oats, and regular oats. What was interesting is that they were all identical in calories. So the calories are the same. And what they did was say to these kids, why don't you go and sit in this room and hang out, read, play games, whatever you want to do. But when you're hungry, just hit this button, we'll bring you food.

27:16And so what they found out was when the kids had the oatmeal, they ate 81 % more food than the omelet, even though it was the same calories over the course of the day. And with the steel cutouts, it was still 51 % more food. But what was interesting was that they also had a catheter in their blood vessels and they drew their blood every little bit. And they found that when the kids ate the oatmeal, it was like a stress response in the body there. Not only their insulin and blood sugar went up, but their adrenaline and their cortisol went up. So when we eat refined foods, they are hugely damaging.

27:46So just in the same way, you can eat foods that actually help reduce your cortisol level. You can actually balance your insulin levels. You can actually reduce adrenaline by eating foods that help you calm your nervous system, which are whole real foods. Good healthy fats like olive oil, avocados, nuts and seeds, high quality protein, regeneratively raised animal foods, eggs, chicken, fish, regeneratively raised meats. You know, even whole beans and whole grains can be very calming and helpful. Although if you eat too much starch and you're in some resistance, it can still be a problem. And then of course, all the plant foods, vegetables, they just are super full of phytochemicals, anti-inflammatory compounds, stress-reducing compounds, and they're really powerful.

28:29So when you shift your diet, you're literally going to change your stress response and change your biology. So what can you do other than looking at your mindset? Because a lot of the stress we respond to is the creation of our mind. You know, Gabor Mate, who's written a lot about trauma, which is real trauma, he says, trauma is not what happens to you. It's the meaning you make from what happens to you. So two people can experience the same event and have very different responses and it can be registered very different in their biology. So it's important to understand that you have to get your mind straight.

29:04And that's not as easy as it sounds because we are kind of conditioned to believe our thoughts. And, uh, you know, my friend, uh, Daniel Amon says, you know, we should stop the answer in our head, the automatic negative thoughts easier said than done, but it's an important practice to start witnessing and looking at your mind. And some of the practices that I'm going to share with you now are very effective in helping us reset our minds as well as our bodies. The first is deal with the root causes of stress, right? So there can be physical stresses like a disease. I mean, I had mercury poisoning, Lyme disease, mold toxicity.

29:36These create a stress in the body. So you have to deal with whatever true physical stresses there are and get rid of them. Gluten, nutritional deficiencies, all the things that are really driving so much disease. And we see this in functional medicine, and it really is looking at the whole scope of what creates balance or imbalance in the body and dealing with that. But once you've done that, and there are no sort of objective external stresses, how do you start to reset? Well, you have to learn to actively relax. It's something we don't get taught. We don't have to sleep and eat and exercise, but most of us don't understand that we have to actively relax.

30:10It's not just sitting on a couch watching TV. is actually helping your body get into what we call a parasympathetic state. And this is not as easy as it sounds. You can do it through meditation. You can do it through a breath work. You can do it through massage. You can do it through prayer, through chanting, through yoga, through various kinds of things that help your body reset your nervous system from an overactive, stressed, sympathetic response to what we call the relaxation response. Meditation is a very powerful tool. It's available to all of us. It's free. You can learn how to do it online.

30:49There's courses and programs. You can read a book about it. It's not that hard to do. It's basically just sitting and watching your thoughts and not getting caught up in them, but letting them pass using your breath as an anchor or a mantra. There's a lot of different techniques out there. Exercise also is a powerful stress reducer. Think about it. When you're running from a tiger, you're producing huge amounts of stress hormones, and then you run and you burn them off. That's what happens is a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky, who studied baboons and stress response, actually, and the hierarchy of baboon societies.

31:21And I highly recommend his book, A Primate's Memoir, which describes his research. But he wrote another book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, which is based... Oh, no, I think that was written by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Sorry. No, I can't remember. Anyway, one of those guys. And the book basically said, you know, the zebra's out there eating his grass and hanging out and there's all the other zebras. And the lion comes, starts chasing them and they all run like crazy, highly stressed. And then the lion catches one of them and then the lion eats the zebra he caught. And then the other zebras just go back to eating the grass, even though the lion's still standing there.

31:54So they discharge the stress. We don't. We continue to accumulate the stress. So exercise is a great way to reduce depression, anxiety, improve mood, to reduce stress response in the body. And that's why you often feel relaxed and calm after, after exercising. Other techniques are really good. Breath work techniques, saunas, cold plunges, a lot of things that now are being used to help with longevity and biohacking also help to reduce the stress response. My favorite is a hot steam and a cold dip. And that really just kind of cuts all the stress for me. A hot bath with Epsom salt, very easy to do.

32:32There's also some supplements you can take. We use a lot of nutrients when we're stressed. Vitamin C, the B-complex vitamins, vitamin B5, zinc, and magnesium. Magnesium is so important. It's the relaxation mineral. So I highly recommend that people take magnesium regularly to calm their nervous system. Herbs can be very helpful. Adaptogenic herbs can help you manage stress. The astronauts were using it, and the Russian astronauts often took these compounds like rhodiola, Siberian ginseng, cordyceps, ginseng, ashwagandha. These are what we call adaptogenic herbs that help modulate the stress response.

33:03Also adaptogenic mushrooms, shaga and reishi, and many, many others are very effective for helping modulate the nervous system. Now look at your mind. Find a way to look at your beliefs, your attitudes, how you respond. and think about the choices you have. You know, I think Viktor Frankl, who was an Auschwitz survivor, said, you know, between stimulus and response, there's a pause. And in that pause lies a choice. In that choice lies your freedom. And I think all of us have just kind of collapsed that stimulus response or just reactive instead of slowing down and looking at our beliefs, our thoughts.

33:36And he, in the concentration camp, chose not to be angry or mad at his Nazi captors. Um, I remember, uh, when I was a young medical student, I went to Nepal and I met with a Tibetan doctor who'd been in a Chinese gulag for 22 years. And I said to him, I said, what was the hardest part about being a prisoner in this Chinese gulag? And he said, well, there were a few times when I thought I would lose my compassion for my Chinese jailers. And I thought, wow, this guy was in jail for 22 years in a gulag. and that was his biggest stress was thinking that he could lose his compassion for his Chinese dealer.

34:14So that just shows you the power of the mind to relate to your environment in quite a different way. So let's talk about what are the biological systems that are improved by exercise. It has to be the right type of exercise, the right dose, right frequency. And we'll talk about what that is, but it improves the health of your immune system. It boosts the number of your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cells. It balances your blood sugar and your insulin, your adrenal glands, your thyroid, your sex hormones. It helps you improve detoxification, your circulation, your lymphatic flow, and even optimizes your microbiome.

34:52That's right, your gut bacteria. It also does some amazing things about the hallmarks of aging. Now, in my new book, Young Forever, here it is, everybody. Super excited about it. It's out February 21st. And in the book, I talk about something called the hallmarks of aging. We've covered it on the podcast a little bit. These are the things that go wrong as we age that underlie all disease. If we cured all cancer and heart disease from the face of the planet, we might extend life by five to seven years. But if we address the hallmarks of aging and the causes of the hallmarks of aging, we might get 30 or 40 years of life extension.

35:24And you know what the deal is about exercise? It addresses many of these hallmarks. For example, it increases telomere length. It reduces inflammation. It improves your mitochondrial health. It impacts your nutrient-sensing pathways, like insulin signaling and mTOR and MPK and sirtuins, things we've talked about. It also improves your epigenome and reverses your biological age. Now, you might be going, well, what am I to do, run a marathon every day? No, you don't. It doesn't take a lot of exercise. Even starting with something as simple as 10 minutes a day can add a significant benefit to your health.

35:57And if you do more, more vigorous exercise, interval training, strength training, you can extend your health span by leaps and bounds, literally. You can stay fit and strong and functioning well into your 80s, 90s, 100s. I just read something pretty interesting that right now there's about half a million centenarians around the world. And pretty soon, by I think 2050, there'll be about three and a half million people living over 100 years old, which is pretty amazing. There's two of the oldest people now around about 115 years old. So many of us were able to reach that age. So if you look at what you need to do, you know, combined with diet, exercise is really the most powerful tool for staying healthy and extending your life.

36:41My mom used to say whenever she had the urge to exercise, she would lie down till it went away, which I think she got from any young men or some comedian. but uh she followed that advice unfortunately and she didn't exercise uh despite my hounding her of course parents never listen to their kids i mean kids whatever something like that parents never listen to their kids and she ended up being pretty frail and disabled the last decade of her life and not too functioning so when you start thinking about how to take this approach of incorporating movement and exercise in your life you can get really amazing benefits i'm just going to kind to go through them because they're just so profound.

37:19It actually unlocks the body's longevity switches, the regenerative and reparative systems that are built into our biology. It activates all the longevity switches that I talk about in the book, particularly the four that have to do with nutrient sensing pathways that are sort of meta to everything else. Insulin signaling, mTOR, which is really important in terms of autophagy and cleaning up your cells, sirtuins which are important in dna repair and also mpk which helps regulate blood sugar insulin sensitivity inflammation and many other things so it's pretty pretty darn exciting it also activates the body's antioxidant systems it improves your cognitive function and your mood it supports i mean they found that just walking helps prevent dementia which is pretty cool it supports your microbiome that reduces inflammation it helps you produce more mitochondria and help them work better and be more efficient and have better function because mitochondria is where you make energy.

38:15And as you get older, you lose energy. So you want to boost that. It also keeps you strong and functional. You know, I just came back from skiing out in Switzerland and I had a really great time. It was a privilege to be able to go there. And I was amazed. Like I was just skiing along like I was when I was 30 or 40. And I was probably going a little too fast, but you know, I like to do that. And, you know, I felt strong and able to do it. And it was keeping up with people half my age. So I think the body has the capacity at NIDH to do this. It also makes you happier and improves your mood and even improves your sex life, believe it or not.

38:49So what does the research say? And let's talk about some of the nitty-gritty about how it works. If you really, you know, maybe you want to know about the science, maybe that'll motivate you. It probably doesn't motivate most people, but it kind of gets me all excited. I kind of like that. I'm a little weird. But it really, the research is just, it's just unbelievable blood exercise when i started to dig into you know obviously you can look at exercise and anything and search on on pubmed and learn about it but i started to look at exercise and longevity and what it does so we covered a little bit of this but i want to sort of expand on it it improves your telomeres which is little caps at the end of your chromosomes that start to shorten as you get older and shorten your life it actually lengthens your telomeres by exercising it protects your telomeres it optimizes all these longevity switches like ampk which regulates blood sugar People say, oh, I'm going to take metformin for longevity.

39:37Well, exercise is way better than metformin for regulating AMPK. It also activates sirtuins, which help DNA repair, reduce inflammation, and improve your blood sugar control, which are really important. It also improves your cardiovascular and heart health, we all know. It reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes and improves your brain function and cognitive function. It also helps certain types of cancer, as I said. You know, we see the regulation of our biology through exercise being meted through all these mechanisms that have to do with immunity and cancer prevention. So it's super great.

40:10And of course, it extends your health span and your lifespan. I remember being in Sardinia and I mentioned this guy, I think, before, but his name is Pietro. He was 95 years old. And he was like a shepherd. And he was just running up and down the mountains all day, five miles a day in this really regular terrain. And he was bolt upright, you know, booming voice, clear eyes, you know, strong and mentally sharp. And I was like, wow, this guy's 95 years old. You know, most people are 95 in America barely can kind of walk across the street or get from their bedroom to the bathroom. And here he is, you know, running up the mountain.

40:40So we have the ability to do that. And he exercised every day as a shepherd, not quote exercise, but he just, that was his life. It also, it's incredible for diabetes, for blood sugar control. I mean, just walking after dinner is a great way to keep your blood sugar down. helps you become more insulin sensitive. And very importantly, it helps you build muscle mass and function. Because as you get older, you lose muscle. It's called sarcopenia. And that leads to all these hormonal and metabolic changes that accelerate aging and lower testosterone, high cortisol, the stress hormone, higher blood sugar, worsening cholesterol.

41:15I mean, just lower growth hormone and increased cortisol. Like I said, it's really bad news. So building muscle is really important and that's clearly only done by exercise uh so hopefully listening all this you realize you can't afford not to move uh my basically philosophy is if you don't move you won't literally you'll be dead um so how can you actually incorporate more movement what can you do without having to drag yourself to the gym now i go to the gym sometimes but i rather play uh and i i think um there's a lot of options and you can just do simple things like uh start with simple things even five minutes a day and if you don't have five minutes a day to do something there's something wrong with your life so you better look at that so you know for example i i figured out i couldn't do 10 push-ups when i was 50 so i i started i'm going to do push-ups so i take a shower most days so i basically would wait for the shower to heat up because it was I live in a barn and it's really tall and it takes a while for the hot water to get upstairs.

42:16And I would do push-ups and I went from being able to not have to do 10 to be able to do almost 100 push-ups without stopping. So we can train our bodies and it's really simple. Or maybe while your coffee's brewing, maybe do some stretching and yoga. Walk or bike instead of driving. In many, many countries, they do this. I just met this guy who was a CEO of a big company and he lived in Switzerland. And he, I mean, he runs a$6 billion company. And he rides his bike straight up the hill or the mountain to work 2 ,000 feet elevation every day. And he's in incredible shape. He's 53 years old. And his VO2 max, which is a measure of fitness, is that of an elite athlete and someone who's like half his age.

42:57So it's very impressive. You don't have to sort of, you know, do something like that. But just, you know, parking further away in the parking lot, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, the escalator. Just simple things to start moving. Also try a standing desk. or a stability ball. If you're, you know, at a desk, you sit on a ball, it kind of helps you move and move your body and increase your core strength. Um, I have a friend, Mike Roizen, who was at Cleveland Clinic with me and he used to have a, a, a treadmill desk. He was on calls and working and working on his computer and walking all day long, which is impressive.

43:32Um, make a, your leisure time, active time. So if you're watching TV or movie. Maybe put a stationary bike in your house. I remember I worked in Idaho as a family doc, and there was this patient that came in, and she lost like 100 pounds. I'm like, what happened to you? And she's like, well, I decided instead of sitting in front of the TV and eating all day, I would get a stationary bike and just ride the bike all day instead of eating. She did, and she lost 100 pounds. So pretty impressive. Maybe also you can listen to podcasts and an audiobook or do something like that when you're exercising or taking a walk and just makes it more fun and motivating.

44:13And also do it with somebody else. As my friend Rick Warren said, everybody needs a buddy. So it's important that if you maybe are having some trouble getting out there and doing stuff, find somebody else to do it with. It's much more fun for me to play tennis with somebody else or play basketball or go on a bike with somebody else and do it by myself. So I try to do it with friends and it's way more fun. Maybe pickleball is the latest craze. Join a pickleball league and go outside and just do fun stuff. So, there's a 10-day detox. You're basically taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff.

44:45You're taking all the foods that cause inflammation, that are toxic to your system, that are inflammatory, can mess with your gut, and you're putting in foods that actually help reset your system. And it's pretty much a very simple approach. It's lots of veggies, so mostly veggies, lots of good fat, lots of fiber, lots of good clean protein well and what does that look like it's tons of non-starchy veggies like broccoli any kind of veggie you think of it's not basically a potato um you know sometimes sweet potatoes are okay for people uh avocados good fats avocados olive oil nuts and seeds lots of good protein grass-fed organic regenerative meats fish chicken uh sometimes we you know for vegetarians or vegans, plant-based proteins like tempeh or non-GMO or organic soy, tofu.

45:38Those are the most dense sources of protein, but you do need protein as you detoxify. So for the 10 days, you're going to be getting rid of all the other junk, right? Processed food, other carbs, sugar, dairy, coffee, gluten, alcohol, pretty much actually all grains and beans. And the reason we get rid of gains, I mean, they're necessarily all bad, is a lot of people have issues. A lot of people have issues with their gut. A lot of people have issues with inflammation. A lot of people have issues with gluten. A lot of people have issues with insulin resistance and prediabetes and obesity. And they can be problematic for these people.

46:15So basically, get off all the bad stuff. Now, it's not calorie counting. You can eat as much as you want. We're not like crazy how much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that. No. It's just pick the right foods. And we focus on what to eat. you don't have to focus on how much to eat, right? So when you look at your plate, it should basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be non-starchy veggies. And I often will put two or three veggies in my dinner. I'll make mushrooms. I'll have broccoli. I'll make some maybe a salad. So I'll have lots of veggies. And I'll have a portion of protein that's essentially the size of my pump.

46:54Four to six ounces, usually 30 to 40 grams of protein. Now, that's a good amount of protein, but you don't eat that much if you're having antall protein. It should be regeneratively raised, should be pasture raised, chicken, wild-caught fish, should be low mercury, obviously all that. And we'll put all that show notes, lots of good fats with dinner, like avocados, nuts and seeds, olive oil in your veggies. You can even use, for example, ghee, which is a kind of a butter, but it actually has the inflammatory proteins removed, casein, and weight. It basically has just the fat. the fat it's called clarified butter very common you can get my book 10 day detox diet you can get the 10 day detox diet cookbook whatever you want put all the show notes and links together i do call it the 10 day detox diet but sometimes you need to do it longer like two weeks three weeks 10 months maybe even 10 years depending on the situation but we're going to talk about the 10 days and how powerful that can be to transform your health now i find that most people have never connected the dots between how they feel and what they eat.

47:59They walk around with what I call FLC syndrome. That's when you feel like crap. And that is a big problem for people. What do I mean by that? Well, you might be tired, sluggish, you might have brain fog, maybe have digestive issues, reflux, heartburn, irritable bowel, maybe have nasal congestion, sinus issues, muscle aches, joint pains, headaches, insomnia. Should I go on rashes, acne? I mean, it goes on and on and on. And many of these things are caused by food. And the only way to know is to do a total body reset, like hitting the reset button on your commuter when all the systems are jammed.

48:41It's a complete reboot. So how do you do a reboot? It's very powerful. And most people have never experienced this. And this is what I love to do with people. And I actually run programs all around the world where people can come and actually experience this. We do programs where we have people do this just in five days, not even 10 days. People have a 70 % reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. Now, I'm going to put in the show notes the medical symptom questionnaire that I use in my practice, which essentially gives you a score based on the degree and frequency and severity of symptoms.

49:12So if you have a headache, is it zero meaning never? Or four, I get it all the time, I get it really that. Or some version in between. And then you get a score at the end and people have a score of 60, 70, 100. It should be less than 10, maybe even zero. Ideally, I usually have symptoms. It's not normal for human beings to suffer this much. And that's really why I created this book and the program, The 10-Day Detox Side, because I was doing this with my patients and seeing such incredible results. So I do this personally regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year, four times a year to really reset my system, to kind of get my body back on track, to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff.

49:46I'm going to walk you through how to do this. I'm going to teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system, and to optimize your biology to help your gut, to help your detox system, to help your immune system, to help reset your nervous system. And it's powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can feel and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like the frog that's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal. I want to do this with a junior high school once.

50:28And the teachers are like, well, we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it's safe. Maybe they don't want their children doing this. I'm like, what, is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food? I mean, they should get a note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have in school. It's the opposite. Anyway, yes, it's very safe. Anybody can do this. And some people, by the way, need more of certain things or other things. But basically, this is a very universal approach to resetting your system.

51:00A second pillar, aside from what you eat, the food is really important. And by the way, you need to eat protein in the morning. You need to make sure you get rid of sugar and starch in the morning. Super important. And many people start their diet, their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do. Sugar-sweetened coffee, steves cereals muffins bagels breads that um second pillar are your daily habit essentially involves a pattern of eating and living that puts your body back in rhythm it helps you reset your nervous system and and there's a few really important habits as part of the 10-day detox one is when you eat and also when you sleep let's talk about when you eat now when you eat might be as important as what you eat so many of us don't eat in the right pattern we tend to um you know eat all day long we tend to snack we tend to eat before bed um we snack late at night it's kind of bad so basically when you eat it's very important research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health uh if you eat at night so the first is make sure you give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast so dinner is six breakfast at eight that's a 14 hour fat okay if you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night that doesn't count right and it's the most uh simple form of what we call time restricted eating and it's basically giving our body a rest and getting the body to reset and i wrote a lot about this in my book the um young forever but but basically there's a whole process at night that happens called autophagy and cleanup and repair you want to give your body uh the ability to do that the The next is food.

52:36Now, you can do a breakfast if you're eating, you know, for example, dinner at six and breakfast at eight or so. That's a 14-hour fast. Really important to have protein in the morning, not carbs and sugar. Also, not eating three hours before bed. It's really important. So most people eat and snack after dinner. Don't do that. Have at least three hours of time you eat and you go to sleep. That way you will lose weight. Your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food. What about sleep? Sleep is one of the most underrated pillars of health. It's probably even before exercise, meditation, maybe even before nutrition.

53:10Because when you don't sleep well, you're going to eat tons of sugar and carbs. You're going to crave more. So you want to focus on sleep and restorative rest. We know that getting in a routine of waking and sleeping can help with a deeper, more restful sleep. So try to take the same bedtime every night. Try to get off your screens for an hour or two before bed. Keep your room, or use blue blocker glasses. Keep your room dark and cold, probably 55 to 68. Really important because your body does much better with sleep at night. Try to relax at night with meditation. Do a guided imagery. Do breath work, stretching, journaling, gratitude practice.

53:46Whatever you like, but do something. Very important. So your evening routine should be like set a bedtime in six or seven, 10 days. Turn your phone off and get it out of your bedroom. Turn the TV off for at least an hour or two before you go to bed. and then use the time of night to read, to journal, to meditate, to connect with people you love, and just kind of wind down. The third pillar is extra support we need on the journey, right? Now, we all need nutrients. They're called vitamins because they were vital amines, vital to life, right? And so we've seen a dramatic reduction in the nutrient density of our food.

54:25Our organic matter has gone out of our soil. nutrients can't be extracted. Foods travel long distances. We have commodity crops that are bred to actually breed out the nutrients and end the starch and yield. And so foods aren't as nutritious as they once were. And probably 90 % of Americans, according to the government-owned surveys, are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiency. So how much vitamin D or do you need to not get rickets? Not very much, like 30 units. How much need for optimal health? probably three to five thousand so we need to really probably focus on nutrients and even with a perfect diet you know because none of us are hunter-gatherers anymore or you know kinds of food that we never ate and i mean nutrient depleted we need we need the basic supplements so we need a basic set of supplements a multivitamin mineral foundational magnesium a lot of us are deficient probably 45 percent or low or deficient magnesium involving over 300 different enzymatic reactions super important helps relax your nervous system at night help you calm down also So people get constipated sometimes when they change their diet.

55:30So taking magnesium citric can help. And lastly, vitamin D. It's also like fish oil, but vitamin D is really important. Vitamin D over 80 % is lower deficient in vitamin D. It's involved in so many different things in the body. So really important. And it helps your mood, helps your muscle function, helps your brain, helps your energy, helps inflammation, autoimmunity. It's just super important. And most of us are low. Fish oil is also important. And I often recommend fish oil to people or omega-3 fats. So what are the program steps in the 10-day detox? What should be the test? And then we're going to go through this.

56:02The first step is to eat from the 10-day detox approved list for 10 days. So eat what I'm telling you, eat whole foods, you can eat a whole food-based shake in the morning. You could add protein powder, grass-fed protein if you want. I have a grass-fed protein called super-sickle protein. But you really need to make sure you have good breakfast. Second is commit to daily habits, right? Pick your designated eating window. You want a 12 to 14-hour night fast, which means eating within a 10 - or 12-hour window. Don't snack before bed. Try to have the same bedtime. Get off your technology an hour or two before.

56:43Practice some active relaxation. Huge impact on your health. Step three is add in the supplements. Now, you don't have to do this, but I really encourage you to have a multivitamin, magnesium, vitamin D, and potentially fish oil. And we're going to list which products you should take in the show notes so you have it all listed there um also what you should eat and what you should avoid during your 1080 talk let's go through that um so here's the full food list um you can you know we're going to have it in the show notes you can take it with you to store it's in the book the 1080 talk it's in the can you talk cookbook but essentially uh here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of uh what you should eat is um protein you need right protein so grass-fed or regeneratively raised meats is great.

57:24You can have past-raised lamb, beef, bison, venison, elk, grass-fed beef, past-raised chicken, turkey, duck, all that's fine. What you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken and poultry and eggs and so forth, and by the way, you can also have eggs if they're past-raised eggs. Meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all conventionally raised feedlot meats, get rid of all that stuff. um what about fish and seafood lots of small fish are good big fish are bad right big fish like swordfish tuna sea bass halibut most farm-based fish are pretty bad for you what you should be consuming are things like the i call this mash fish a small wild salmon uh sardines anchovies herring a mackerel um you can have black cod shrimp scallop trout all those are fine eggs as i said uh, pasturized eggs are fine.

58:18Non-organic regular eggs are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important. Uh, almonds, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts, macadamia, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, all that's great. Um, you can even kept to cow nids, chocolate, not actually chocolate, but where chocolate comes from. Uh, seeds are great. Chia seeds, flak seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all great. Uh, nut butters also great so um uh unsweetened nut butter so almond cashew pecan macadamia i love macadamia a walnut oh that's great um you also eat beans at their if you're a vegan and you want to do this you can use uh gmo free or non-gmo tofu or tempeh as your protein um what you should avoid are nuts that are with sugar, that are cooked in oils, that are basically candied stuff.

59:12A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogenated fats. Peanut butter, peanuts can be okay, but I would say mostly avoid peanuts because they have aflatoxin in them. They often are rancid, and so you want to be careful with that. What about oils and fats? Well, the ones you want to use are organic avocado oil. you can use forget coconut oil for cooking grass-fed ghee if you want to use tallow lard duck fat chicken fat that's okay as long as they're they're um pathways or regenerative raised for salads and you can use different kinds of oils like almond oil flax oil hemp oil macadamia oil and convert to olive oil um and you can cook with olive oil but only like tomato sauces and things like that things that are not high heat sesame oil tahini is great as well great fat sesame seed kind of paste, walnut oil, those are flavorful oils, they're not made but you want to avoid the traditional oils, all the seed oils like canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, saffron oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff's bad.

1:00:18What about veggies? What should you eat? Well, you want to stick with lots of non-farty veggies or arachokes, organic if you can. I use the Dirty Dozen guide from the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org I'll tell you which of the clean 15, meaning you can eat them not organic or the dirty dozen, which you can definitely not eat if they're not organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, bean sprouts, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm, kohlrabi, leafy greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onions, peppers, radicchio, radish, rutabagas, all that kind of stuff.

1:00:54seaweed is great lots of minerals shallots summer squash tomatoes turnips zucchini list goes on we have all in there you can have some uh things like sweet potatoes i like the japanese purple sweet potatoes winter squash carrots pumpkin all that's fine i mean carrots are fine because unless you're doing carrot juice or that's a problem but basically try to limit it to a like one uh serving which is like half a cup a day uh what you should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes mostly a little you know some of the little uh fingerling potatoes or the peruvian potatoes purple potatoes can be fine what about dairy um you can eat pasture-raised butter or ghee but i encourage you to get up all dairy including sheep and goat which are mostly fine for people but i encourage you to just get all other dairy and if you're having um i encourage you to have make sure it's grass grass fed or regenerated raised what about beans well uh you can have green beans you're gonna have green peas uh you can have a non-gmo or organic soy but just tofu or tempeh uh you can have snap beans you can have snow peas um but otherwise definitely no no beans uh what about grains no grains at all so uh even healthy grains quinoa buckwheat things like that i incredibly have off off all that why because it just shuts down the insulin response, helps people lose weight, reduce inflammation.

1:02:15Not that these are necessarily all bad, but eventually you can add them back. But basically get rid of all the other, all grains, wheat, barley, rye, rice, amaranth, millet, tap, oats, everything. Get rid of it. Fruit, fruit can be okay, but small amounts of non-hydrolycemic fruit. So organic blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, limes, raspberries, all that's fine. Not too much, right you know what i mean like you know two pounds of blueberries but you can have a top half a cup a day you want to get rid of all the other fruit all the high glycemic fruit like bananas pineapple melons cherries grapes those are the worst even foods that fruits that you think you know may be good for you are actually good for you right whether it's you know peaches pears nectarines uh cherries for example but you don't want to eat them while you're on the 10-day detox you want to really shut down the blood sugar and some response uh what about sugar sweeteners sorry none you can sometimes have a little monk fruit or stevia you have in the shake uh we have but generally i tend to avoid all that stuff um also just get all the other artificial sweeteners all the sugar all that stuff if you have to ask the answer is no basically um then what should you be drinking well lots of water herbal tea green tea uh let's go a little caffeine, that's okay.

1:03:34A little green tea is fine. You can help you get off coffee, sparkling water, mineral water, all that's fine. We should avoid alcohol, coffee, bottled water, some plastic, soda, obviously sugary beverages. Basically, that's the program. So if you eat that way for 10 days, if you use those simple habits, your body is going to totally transform and you're going to see just how food is impacting your health, which is the thing most people don't have a clue about and that's why i love this so much now after the program it's really important if you do it for 10 days or 21 days or 10 weeks or 10 months you have to be smart about getting off it or you can get into big trouble because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory foods they're allergic to and then you reintroduce them you can get a lot worse symptoms let's say you had migraines before and they're gone wow you're going to get a duty of a migraine or let's had gut issues before you're getting a real problem unless you had sinus congestion from eating dairy and you eat it again you might get a science infection so you really have to be smart so if you're feeling great you want to continue and you let's say you have a lot of weight to lose let's say you have an autoimmune disease let's say you find out you're feeling great you want to continue no problem you continue it continue to do it you can do it for another 10 days you can do it for another 10 months it's fine it's totally safe to eat and it's pretty much how i eat most of the time with occasional grains and beans.

1:04:58Also prioritize sleep and obviously your fasting window, not eating before bed. And then eventually people can transition slowly to the pagan diet, which incorporates a lot of the principles of the 10-day detox diet, but it gets you more flexibility in your diet. You can add some gluten-free grains, you can add some grass-fed dairy or sheep or goat. Maybe you want to do it most of the time, but occasionally I've got the wine or dessert occasionally all that's fine remember when you're adding things back you want to do it smartly and i in the 1080 talks book we'll put in the show notes you have to add one thing at a time so if you're adding back gluten just do that for three days don't have a pizza which has gluten and dairy all right you won't know what's affecting if you feel bad you want to know so give yourself three days and then pick the next food so start with gluten and dairy then grains other grains and whatever you'll see slowly add food back and you'll see how you feel and that's your best barometer.

1:05:50The smartest doctor in the room is your own body. And that's what you want to focus on. So congratulations. Hopefully you're going to do this. Congratulations in advance. You're going to take the first steps for optimal health kind of hard sometimes to kind of know what to think or feel. But I always say, don't listen to me. Listen to your body. It's the smartest doctor in the room. Try this. See what happens. If it doesn't work, 10 days, who cares, right? If it works, you have the answer and the key to unlock some of your help.

1:06:48clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner.

1:07:18And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.