The Secrets to Healthy Aging | Shawn Stevenson

28:00So they're the same size, same amount. And they were all essentially 380 calories. But what they did was they placed different labels on the milkshakes. Some of the labels said 140 calorie, quote, sensible shake. while others are labeled with 620 calorie, quote, indulgent shakes. All right. Again, they're all 380 calories, but they put different labels on them. So people came by, you know, different participants, they enjoyed milkshakes, and they actually tracked their biometrics after consuming the milkshakes and looked at did their belief about what they were consuming affect how their body processed what they consumed.

28:42And here's what was crazy. The people that consumed what they believed to be a 620 calorie, quote, indulgent milkshake, their levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin that drives us to eat more dropped three times lower than what would have happened had they actually consumed the 620 calorie milkshake. All right. So their ghrelin levels dropped three times lower. Okay. so they were told they were taking the 620 but they were taking a 380 right okay so let me clarify this so their ghrelin levels had dropped as if they had consumed three times more calories than they actually had so this is going off of the 380 calories so it dropped three times lower than those calories that they actually had yeah okay now the people who consumed what they believed to be a 140 calorie quote sensible shake their ghrelin levels didn't budge at all they didn't drop at all all right so what that means is they're going to be hungry again shortly thereafter because they felt like as far as the hormones are these are two glorified hunger hormones leptin is the satiety hormone and ghrelin is a kind of the captain of the team of hunger hormones but there's many more the brain is telling itself that they hardly consumed anything This was like nothing.

30:10It was like just a piece of candy. Exactly, exactly. And also if they consumed this 300 calorie milkshake, but they believe they consumed something that was more dense in calories, their body adjusted accordingly based on their beliefs as if they had something that was very indulgent, which helped to quench their appetite substantially. So this is really looking at far reaching aspects of the placebo effect, right? It's not just about a drug treatment. This is also about how our metabolism is working and how our bodies interact with foods. And this is just one example of many. So yeah, so how can I make use of this though?

30:47Like, because I can't hypnotize myself into thinking, you know, I don't know, you have to be really disciplined on your thinking somehow. And here's the key. This is the key to all of this is we still are in the driver's seat. And so it's subtle things that we can do in this context because, for example, like this whole thing of being sensible versus indulgent, we can perceive our food differently. If we're eating something that we think is exceedingly healthy and we don't like eating healthy or haven't been eating healthy, but we believe that it's healthy, we're going to tell ourselves that this is restrictive, that this is sensible, and our bodies are going to approach that food accordingly.

31:32versus if we're telling ourselves, and we don't have to lie to ourselves, this is where I come in with the Eat Smart Family Cookbook as well to make it more congruent. But like, oh my God, this food that sidebar is healthy is so indulgent. This is so delicious. You know, I'm loving this experience. You're telling yourself, you're feeding yourself, creating this feedback to where like, this is amazing. I can't believe I get to have this. So there's this whole, and I'm not a big fan of this sentiment of faking it till you make it. I believe that if it's congruent, it's going to be more effective, but some people do use that.

32:07They do use the whole thing of like, fake it till you make it, be it till you see it, but in how they're talking to themselves. But what if we can couple that together with something that does truly have that flavor experience, for example, of being something that's indulgent, right? But at the same time, we're also giving ourselves that positive, of affirmative information or language along with it, now we've got a recipe that can really be effective. Yeah. So, so basically it's funny because I see how now how you're structuring this cookbook. You give all these cultural and societal reasons, like, you know, eat with your family, turn off the phones.

32:47This is the benefits of cooking your own meals as opposed to ordering out. So you give like all these stories and examples and the, and the research of kind of the, the healthy aspects of the environment you set up for yourself to eat. And then you give all these healthy recipes and they, cause they both work hand in hand. Exactly. Exactly. So it's that it's layered, you know, we've got the kind of education empowering, but also, and you know, this people learn differently, you know, different people learn different ways. And so speaking to people at different, different levels, like we have an emoji culture, for example, you know, And like a chain of emojis can communicate a lot for certain people.

33:27And so even if you don't want to learn the science, I'm providing, okay, here are the studies affirming how, for example, dark cherries have these anthocyanins that have been found to potentially target fat cells in humans and shrink fat cells. They also are one of the most dense naturally occurring sources of melatonin, right? So now we've got, okay, some metabolic benefit. We've got a sleep-related benefit. So you'll see a sleep emoji when I talk about this food, and you'll see a little muscle emoji denoting that this is good for your metabolic health, right? And so you could just see those things and be like, oh, it's good for this and good for this, for people that I don't wanna dig too deep into the weeds on the science.

34:09And now I can look at the associated recipe. Like for example, one of them is these cherry frozen yogurt pops that kids absolutely love. This again, it's a family-geared cookbook. It's not just for us as adults to have this deliciousness, but also for kids. But now it's a huge upgrade because it's one of my favorite things growing up was like when the ice cream man, I don't know if James, do you know about the ice cream man? Oh yeah, sure. Yeah, with the music. Yes, the music. All the kids would run. You'd have to like get, find your mom, get money and run as fast as you can to catch the ice cream truck.

34:42Bum, bum, man's coming. You know, yes, we're all flipping out, you know, running after this guy. But it's like, it's like the Pied Piper. All right. It's just so crazy. But tuning into those things, those cultural loves that we have and not villainizing them, but let's upgrade these things. Let's have these flavor experiences, these cultural experiences, but not hurt ourselves in the process. And just to even transition now to the cognitive piece, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, and this is going to shift over to what are some of the practical things to do to really optimize or improve your cognitive function.

35:21First piece is, again, we can throw all the nutrients necessary, all the, you know, whatever exercise, what it's not going to matter if the language is such that, oh man, I'm falling off here big time. You know, there's people out here kicking my ass because I'm old. I'm not saying that you said that, but we've got to stand guard. No, I said it. We've got to stand guard to the door of our mind and those ideas. Here's the funny thing too. Like, so I live in Georgia right now and I'm the Georgia senior chess champion, meaning for anybody over age 50, I'm the champion. But so like, it's like I have no problems when I'm playing someone my age.

36:03I'm still playing better than ever, but it's somehow I talk myself into it. I even get nervous when I'm playing someone younger, like a kid. Ooh, okay. So this is good stuff. My youngest son, we were just talking before we got started. He plays AAU basketball here in Los Angeles. And it's like a big deal here. It's very intensive. You know, parents are very invested in this stuff. And this past practice, this was the first time that his coach had him who's with the kids who are 11 and 12 years old. Now he had my son come over and play with the people who are 14 and 15. All right. And he's the only young kid that he had come over and play with these older kids.

36:44and my son right on the surface but now he's playing at a different level there's a different speed and so i'm seeing my son i know my son very well in his personality he wants to be good immediately if he's not good at something immediately he gets uh deflated pretty quickly and so because he has a tendency to be good at stuff but also we've had to cultivate more of that like stick to it attitude, right? And so he came out, a couple of things are going well, got a couple of rebounds. He stole the ball. He had a good look at the basket, good shot, but also these kids were scoring on him, which is he's not really used to spin moves and the ball's moving really quickly and they're getting up and down the court.

37:28There's like a different speed. And for me from the outside and the other dads are there watching too. And there's like, oh man, Brayden's really like, he's contributing, right? And we're all impressed with this. But afterwards, Brayden didn't want to talk to me until like before bed, which I know his personality. So we didn't talk about it. And he came over to me. He's like, dad, I'm sorry, I didn't talk to you. I just felt like, you know, I didn't really do very well. I'm like, bro, you just came over and played with these older kids. It's a different speed, but your coach is doing this on purpose because he knows that that's going to elevate your game, right?

38:02You getting this exposure. Could it hurt his confidence so that he starts that negative self-talk? That's where coaching, that's where support comes in at. Because this can be a minefield walking around in your own mind. And so it's being able to reframe it properly, right? And this is the key. And this is where I found that sticky point for him because I saw this, being able to observe. I was like, and so he did that. So when you're playing at this higher level, at this higher speed with these guys, Now, when you play kids your age, it's going to seem like you are completely at a different level than them.

38:35And he said these exact words. He said, that's exactly what happened. Because at the end of practice, he went and scrimmaged with his age group again. And he was like, I felt like they were like little kids. Right? That's the language he used. And for me, it's almost like the reverse. Because the younger kids now, for me, are like the older kids for him. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So that's what we've got to do. Once I play, now that I've been playing the whole universe of people, including these really fast-moving younger kids, when I go back to the older, my age, I win those tournaments, no problem.

39:14Well, not no problem, but I win them. But I'm so upset when I lose to these younger players now, the players like when I was young. that's still keeping you better than the people in your age group that's the thing to focus on you know and also of course is as you do it you know what's said is that you know neurons that fire together wire together you know as you do the process you know you said even just it's been pretty recent that you've gotten back into doing this you haven't even hit your stride yet you haven't even locked in at the level that you're going to be at and so but well i don't know because lately i've been thinking it's almost a race against time like the older i get the faster I start to fall into oblivion.

39:57We've got to absolutely crush that belief. That belief needs to be deleted, put into the trash, and then wiped from your computer completely. It is not serving you whatsoever. And it's not even based on reality. It's not really based on the facts. Let me give you another little insight. That 70-year-old guy that I saw performing yesterday, you know, doing this grand talk and, you know, his ability to, you know, think on his feet, you know, different stuff was going on. But I'll tell you what, of everybody that he's texting, I'm probably the person he's texting the most and staying in touch with me.

40:36We hang out quite a bit. He's around somebody with a younger energy. I don't think he's doing it consciously, but he's around that vibration. He really loves being around my family and I, you know, his significant other, like in him, they hang out with us quite a bit. He's got these other inputs. He's got an, you know, an elderly kind of like community as well, but he spends a lot of time with people who are very youthful, you know, and he sees himself in us. He plays, you know, he has this very childlike approach to things and it's conditions, right? We've got to put ourselves in these different environments that here's a key.

41:18It can often feel uncomfortable as well, you know, but for us, especially as we get older, and this is the point I'm trying to get to, it really, really does operate it on a use it or lose it basis straight up. Our brains are already about efficiency and they're not fully, really quote, fully developed until our mid twenties. And then we believe, then we start this, what we believe to be process of degradation. But even when we're younger, you know, a lot of stuff, if it's, your brain is always looking to optimize and to kind of, you know, put on automatic certain processes. And so it's going to clip away things that are unnecessary.

42:03Those neurons, that firing, the synaptic clefts and the axon terminals and all that magic that's happened to create these laying down myelin, all of that stuff is just going to degrade if you're not using it because your brain is all about efficiency. And so when we're younger, because there's so many inputs and so much is trying to grow so quickly, it can seem like you can do more stuff, right? But same thing holds true for kids. And we're seeing this early earlier, by the way, this cognitive degradation. If kids are not able to be in certain conditions, to explore, to play. Play is one of the things that is, of everything we've seen in clinical research, play dramatically improves reading ability, math skills, all this stuff is correlated with movement, right?

42:51And so here's the pin, kind of cherry on top of this is, with this use it or lucid thing, it deeply holds true for the brain, but if you want to look at the brain as a muscle, but also our other muscles as well. One of the hottest things in science right now is looking at the muscle connection to longevity. A friend of mine just had a book, New York Times bestseller, just last week, all about muscle and its connection to our immune function, our cognitive function, and true healthy aging, like longevity. There are people who are in their 80s and 90s who are doing over 100 squats a day because their chair is on the floor, all right?

43:36If we're not doing that capacity, do you know how many people, how much a small percentage of people in the United States that can actually sit down on the floor at age 70 and get up off the ground, let alone hundreds of times a day? they do it in those other cultures because they have to. And then you see a documentary on these blue zones and these places where they have all these long lived people who can do all this stuff. It's because they do the stuff. They never stopped doing the stuff. It's so interesting you say this. So a friend of mine said something similar. He pointed out to me, so I'm going to shout out to Todd Bryant who is a chess master, works at chess.com he pointed out to me the winners of this year's various national senior championships there's like two or three different tournaments he showed me photos and they all as he put it, they all showed significant musculature like you could tell they work out, like they lift weights and you could tell for each winner of these tournaments, he said they're all lifting weights, you could see it, and so he suggested to me.

44:43You got to start lifting weights. All right. So we're getting into it. This is the transition I'm making into the practical. So I'm laying the groundwork to tie in pieces like this. And yes, when we contract our muscles, we release a variety of hormones. And some of the most identified as far as cognitive function, they're called myokines. So they're these different compounds that go directly to the brain. And these can elicit a variety of different effects. So they also have an impact of supporting our immune system as well. But one of the most notable things is keeping our brain young, essentially, but also improving our cognitive function and reaction time and all these different things that we lose because even our reaction time and our ability to move is a function of our brain.

45:33That's part of the problem with modern science is that we compartmentalize everything. We've got this part of the brain does this, this part, this muscle does that. And we forget that it's all connected. That's the problem. You know, the hippocampus is largely identified as the quote, memory center of the brain, but memory doesn't just exist in the hippocampus. There are other, your cells, even, you know, downstream, not in your brain, have what is effectively their own memory. You know, we hear this term like quote, muscle memory, but we're finding now we've got some data. You know, if you look at Dr.

46:11Caroline Leaf and her research, that our mind isn't just located in our brain as well, you know? And so it's like this conversation, we tend to like look at the human body and brain like gears and levers, right? So Descartes, you know, like Descartes and like looking at this mechanistic view of the human body and brain, we're so much more complex than that. And so that is step number one. And just the fact that your friend just mentioned this to you recently as well, this is an affirmative piece here. Once you start strength training on a regular basis, you're going to be a problem for these younger people.

46:51You're going to be a problem for them. And so I've never lifted weights at all in my life. So, or I've never really, I've done, I've lifted weights, but I've never had a regular practice that let's say lasted more than a few weeks. And so what I've done after Todd said that to me, I got a bunch of barbells and I know myself, I'm not going to go to the gym. So I got a bunch of barbells and they're just sitting right here in my office and occasionally I'll pick them up and do something. I look at some YouTube videos of what exercises work, but I'm probably not doing it enough. I don't know. When you said that you haven't done this, like this hasn't been a part of your kind of lifestyle.

47:29For me, I got excited because you have so much upside that people don't have that, that are doing it consistently, even though there's a huge advantage there, of course, but for people that are new, because your, your, your genes have been screaming at you for years to just be like, you don't think they gave up on me? No, I mean, the blueprints are still there. They're still there, but these epigenetic inputs basically can alter the way that your, that your proteins, like, you know, one of my, another one of my mentors, Dr. Bruce Lipton, cell biologist, and somebody who really, he really popularized the term epigenetics, the science of it, getting people interested in it.

48:11He's been doing this for decades. And he shared with me that, you know, and when I was in my university biology class, you know, we're taught DNA to RNA to protein, right? We see the out picturing the protein copies that are getting printed, right? So what you're seeing when you see me, James, and when I see you are your proteins, predominantly. Of course, we're seeing some minerals in the mix and that kind of stuff, but it's the proteins that are getting printed based on the blueprint, right? But he shared with me that the epigenome, epigenetics, so inputs from your environment, there's nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, where how our food will change how our genes are getting expressed.

48:48He shared with me that one gene can have 3 ,000 different potential proteins that get printed out based on the inputs. All right. Some of those proteins are going to code for things or express for things that you want. Some of them are going to be expressing things that you might not want. Right. But we label them as diseases. And these are simply adaptations for the most part, most of us arrive here in life with pretty good genes. Less than a half of a percent of human beings have true genetic defects that they're born with. A lot of times something happens, certain exposures. We have this whole category of carcinogens, for example.

49:34The WHO has this whole list. One of them is just riddled in our food supply right now, glyphosate. The WHO classified it as a group 2A carcinogen, which means that it's probably causing cancer in humans. And the Environmental Working Group did a recent analysis of grain products on US store shelves, and they found that 80 to 90 % of conventional grain products are contaminated with glyphosate that probably causes cancer in humans. What do you think is going to happen? And again, that's just one category. We've got this new emerging category that now we've got a pretty solid amount of science on called obesogens.

50:11So these are obesity causing agents that go beyond this kind of rudimentary calories in, calories out metric, looking at humans again as calculators and mechanistically, but altering the way that your metabolism is working, leading to excessive body fat gain, right? And many of these compounds are in our food supply. What food has obesogens? Listen, you can be pretty much guaranteed if you're eating Pop-Tarts, if you're eating Funyuns, any of these ultra-processed foods. And let's clarify what this is because humans have been processing foods forever. Processing a food is not a problem. When you cook a food, you're processing the food.

50:57Taking a tomato and creating pasta sauce is a process. Pressing the oil out of olives is a process. That's minimally processed. When you cook a steak or you cook a sweet potato, you're processing the food. You're changing the way that those certain bonds, the chemical complexes in the food and how even the bioavailability of the nutrients, a lot is changing when you cook a food. Minimally processed. Human's been doing that for thousands of years. Ultra-processed foods, on the other hand, this new category, it's just been the last few decades, that's when you have a field of wheat. For example, you see that field of wheat and somehow that becomes a bowl of frosted flakes.

51:42That field of wheat somehow becomes those Pop-Tarts. And shout out to Jerry Seinfeld's bit on Pop-Tarts. All right, I always think about that. I'll tell you one quick story. So in 2010, for a few months, I did have a trainer and it was like three times a week, but I was also addicted to Eggos. and you're like 11 in uh in stranger things have you watched stranger things yeah yeah yeah uh yeah that 11's the um she's got like those powers yeah the powers yeah she loves egos go ahead i watched the first season but uh he could tell by just by looking at me whether i had egos or not that morning and he was 100 correct wow you got you had the ego the ego effect yeah you know it It must have been like exuding obesogens.

52:31And it's not just the fact that it's been so denatured. It's all of the things that have to be added into that process of getting that field of wheat into that Pop-Tart form. All of these synthetic newly invented chemicals, additives, preservatives, many of these things, again, unfortunately, they're largely unregulated because of this grass system or generally regarded as safe, where we have this loophole from decades ago that all of these compounds are able to just be put into our food supply. It's like, oh, well, this we found 40 years ago, this wasn't a problem for humans in such and such amount, right?

53:11It's just like, it's ridiculous. And so, you know, with that being said, by the way, just to put an affirmative piece on this, this study was published in the journal, the American Medical Association in 2018. They were looking at like, what are the underlying causes of our epidemics of chronic diseases that we're seeing today? Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, list goes on and on. Poor diet was the number one cause affirmed in this huge meta-analysis of our epidemics of chronic diseases. Poor diet, namely ultra-processed foods.

54:06so let me ask you when you were diagnosed with your degenerative disease when you were 22 years old again your first reaction was depression but then how did you get control in your mind even and then in your body of this disease and then obviously i'm assuming the conclusion is that you defeated it because you're looking good and healthy and it doesn't seem like you have this disease. I'm not exaggerating when I say this. My diet was about 90 % ultra processed foods at the time. Living in Ferguson, Missouri, surrounded by fast food, surrounded by ultra processed foods at every turn, liquor stores lined with ultra processed foods.

54:44That's all that I knew. I grew up eating like that. And if anybody thinks that I'm exaggerating, listen to this. This was published by the BMJ, British Medical Journal. This is like top tier peer-reviewed journal. They found recently that 60 % of the average American's diet, ultra processed foods, and I'm specifically speaking about American adults, 60 % of our diet as grownups is ultra processed foods in the United States. But the situation is far worse for children. And the E.S. Martyr Family Cookbook is actually the first book is publishing this data, this new study. And I'm grateful for that.

55:29But also this is like, don't just hear this. Like this is, we have to change this. They looked at the consumption of ultra processed foods by US children for 20 years. This was published in JAMA as well, the Journal of the American Medical Association. So in 1999, the average child in the United States diet was 61 % ultra-processed food. By 2018, that number was almost 70 % of our children's diet is fake food. And with these studies, when I say these numbers, there's always people, there's always kids on the higher end and on the lower end. There's some kids out there that are eating 20 % ultra-processed foods.

56:04I was at the other end eating 90 % ultra-processed foods. You know, a typical day for me would be McDonald's breakfast, you know, sausage biscuit, you know, with egg and cheese or hotcakes and sausage. And for lunch, it would be like some chicken tenders, which is a little bit of like real food in there somewhere. And, you know, some chips or some fries or pizza. and then for dinner, I might have a family can of like SpaghettiOs or a box of Velveeta shells and cheese if I had a couple extra dollars or go to Jack in the Box, get four tacos for like $4. I'm sorry, not$4,$2 and some change because they're due for 99 cents.

56:46All right. That's how I'm eating every day, every single day. It was cheap, it was accessible, and it tasted really good and it was making my tissues out of really low quality materials. That's at the core of this and why this matters is we're literally making our brain cells and every cell of our bodies out of the inputs that we give it. And we're not taught this in school. I had a high level nutritional science class, biology class in a university. We're not taught when we're studying the cell and looking at the mitochondria that the mitochondria is made from your menu, that your nucleus of your cells are made from the nutrients you eat.

57:25We're not taught that. There's a disconnect. And so when I became aware of that, thankfully, it took two years before I did anything because I was given permission and told that I was unhelpful and I was miserable, you know, but I had some seeds planted. This is why this matters too. You know, thankfully, like some people saw something in me, you know, my grandmother, like just, it really kind of came up after a couple of years of suffering, like, you know, she always thought that I was going to do well. She was always checking in on me, even though it was annoying, but just like my life conditions are not matching up to my blueprint of what I set out for my life to be.

58:03And I've been blaming everybody else. And sure enough, yes, the environment was not conducive to my wellness at all, but I've been pointing fingers like, why won't this doctor help me? Why won't this person help me? Why won't these people support me? And I had to have the audacity to take responsibility and say, you know what? I'm going to do whatever I can do to feel better. And really, that's when everything changed. How did you change the habit? I mean, there's not only the knowledge that you had to have, but then how did you change the habit? I'm talking now back, I did a podcast with Rich Roll back in 2015.

58:43And he was telling me when he made his big switch in diet, he was telling me part of the problem was, which made it like agony for the first couple of weeks or months or whatever, was that the food you eat creates the bacteria that lives in your gut. And that bacteria has cravings. It wants that food more. So if you're just eating junk food, for instance, the junk food bacteria is hanging out in your gut brain and in the serotonin in your gut and saying, give me more of that junk food or it triggers really real pain in the brain. Yeah. They're very addictive and we know this. There's certain phenomenon that's called post ingestive feedback of where certain flavors are attached to certain nutrients that have been manipulated by food scientists.

59:28There's vanishing caloric density where we eat something that's very calorie dense, but then it disintegrates so quickly. Your brain is kind of tricked like, that I just really, I think I just ate 100 calories or something, but it doesn't seem like there's much there. There's all these different phenomenas that are created via ultra processed food. And yes, it can be difficult, but here's the thing at the end of the day, and Rich experienced this as well. There is something remarkable about us that gets muted because we can truly, like, that's nothing to us. Some fucking food? Like, we can overcome that.

1:00:09Like, that's, no, it's, we're so much more powerful than any of these things. And I'm saying that because so many people have overcome the most trying and tragic conditions of inputs. You can name everything. Whatever you name, whatever addiction, whatever poor circumstance, somebody has risen from that stuff. and they've lived to tell the tale. That's a good point. We are so much stronger and more resilient than we give ourselves credit for, but this goes back to what we started with today, James, which is we are living in this environment today where we're constantly inundated with information.

1:00:49There's so much to be into. We're regurgitating stuff, but we're not able to actually go within into access, to analyze, to perspective take, to question our thinking, to self-assess. And as the great statement says, to know thyself. We have a society today that is distracting us from any of that stuff. So it's so easy to say this is too hard, even though it's hard, but it doesn't have to be worse than it is. And so we throw in the towel before we even get started a lot of times. I mean, when you were first changing your habits. Like I imagine you had to see results fairly quickly to continue with it or else you would give up because you just didn't know.

1:01:33And this leads to the power of, yes, you just mentioned something so important in this whole process, which your brain needs feedback. This is the power of doing something that is actually effective. All right. When I first decided to feel better, to get well, and my goal was, it started off with asking a different question. There's this interesting thing that the brain does. It's called instinctive elaboration. All right. And we all have a dominant question. Basically the human brain is always, you're always asking questions. A lot of times it's, it's unconscious. That's fueling your focus. All right.

1:02:12And you know, Jim quick, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my guy, Jim quick shared with me when I shared with him, this about instinctive elaboration, he was like, you know what? I had this experience with Will Smith. And by the way, this is before, this is before all the stuff. All right. But he went to, to on set with Will Smith where he was filming Suicide Squad. And he got to ask Will some questions and to see like, how is he thinking? And so Will's dominant question, and this is what Jim calls it. So I mentioned that this is called instinctive elaboration, right? We're all, we're all always doing this.

1:02:48And Jim was like, we all have a dominant question. And Will's dominant question was, how can I make this moment magical? Because on the set, they were cold. They were like up in somewhere in Canada, it was snowing. Will was like making hot chocolate for everybody, telling jokes and just had the staff and all the, you know, the cold where everybody was feeling like such a connection and like a magical moment. And so Jim was trying to tweak and find out how he can even help Will to have an even more powerful dominant question. And so what they came to was, how can I make this moment more magical, right?

1:03:21To already have the assumption that this is a magical moment and make it more magical. And so my dominant question prior to making this transformation was, why me? Why me? And so internally and externally, I'm going to be looking for things to affirm why my life sucks, why I'm unhelpable, why I'm in so much pain, why nobody will help me. I was just affirming all that stuff every day. And so I made this switch cognitively and I didn't know, I didn't know any of this stuff at the time, but when I decided to get well that night, you know, I was about to take my pills and try to knock me out to get some sleep because I was in pain.

1:03:59And I was thinking about my grandma and I was thinking about this third doctor I had just seen who told me that he can't help me. And I was just like, okay, what can I do? to feel better? What can I do? But I said it like this, what can I do? What can I do to feel better? Instead of trying to get all these people to help me to feel better, what can I do? And being a logical thinker, again, it's not like, again, the genie pops out of a lamp or whatever, shout out to Will Smith and Aladdin or whatever. But I put a plan together and I was like, okay, I need to lose weight because at this point I'd gained a bunch of weight because I was so sedentary and in so much pain, I was like, just logically thinking, what if I get some of the pressure off of my spine now that I'm so heavy?

1:04:43And what if I just walk a little bit, like do a little bit of exercise to help to lose this weight? So that was my goal. My low hanging fruit, being an athlete at a high level until I started having all these injuries was working out. Like I knew a thing or 20 about that. And so, but the whole food piece of losing weight, this is what I did first, James. I did slim fast. All right. Have a shake for breakfast, one for lunch and a sensible dinner. I was going off marketing because I watched someone's TV. I saw it. First of all, the shit was nasty. Second of all, I did initially lose like two pounds like that first week, but it was miserable.

1:05:22It was miserable. I was always hungry and it was like, it was nasty. It wasn't enjoyable. And about a week later, a friend of mine that I had known for a couple of years, usually we'd kick it, hang out, do different stuff. But for whatever reason, she was driving and I was just in the car with her and she went to Wild Oats, which has since been bought by Whole Foods. It's kind of more like a mom and pop type of Whole Foods vibe. And I walk into this place. I live in Ferguson, Missouri. I'd never seen anything like this. there are all of these like, you know, organic foods and all these like styles of supplements and books and all this stuff.

1:06:04But because my mindset was different, that I'd driven past Wild Oats on the highway, you know, hundreds of times. I didn't know that place existed, but I was tuned into the why me, my life is terrible station. And so I'm just my, I couldn't see it, but it landed me there and I found a book there and I actually have that book over on my shelf in my library, right next door to my office where we're at right now. And I went and looked at my condition, degenerative disc disease. And there were these studies. And again, I was in college. I was like, oh, is there actual references for this? And I go and look at these studies.

1:06:47And one of the studies found that when you are deficient in calcium, funny enough, Your body will, because calcium is needed to not just for your bones, it's needed to clot your blood. It's kind of important. If you don't have enough calcium, your body will literally leach the calcium from your spine and from your hips, in particular, to help aid in other processes. Guess what else I did? I broke my hip a couple years earlier at track practice just running. And it's just like, does this book know me? Has it been watching me? Am I in the Truman Show? That's how I felt at the time. Like this literally happened to me, but I'm drinking milk every day.

1:07:28The marketing says, got milk, strong bones. My bone density was so low. It was that of somebody, again, who was in their elderly years, but in our population of unhealthy folks, 80, 90. The doctor specifically said 80 year old when talking about me. Gosh. All right. And so here's the last piece. So I found out this information and the first thing that I did, was, okay, I need these supplements, right? I need this supplement. Another study was omega-3s and how important that was for bone density. I was like, I had no idea. I didn't know what, first of all, I'd never heard of omega-3s. And once I start to get some of the data on this, I'm like, oh, this is all about the brain.

1:08:08But no, no, no, you need omega-3s for your bones as well. And I was just looking at my nutritional intake and I'm like, I probably don't get any like viable source of omega-3s like at all, like in a, maybe once a year, maybe. And so the first thing I did was become a natural pill popper. All right. So now I'm just replacing my prescription drugs for all these supplements, which was not doable on my college poor guy living in Ferguson, Missouri budget, but also that wasn't the most bioavailable. Thankfully, I came across some data. And by the way, a lot of these studies that I'm sharing are in the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook.

1:08:48And so bioavailability means can your cells actually use it? And I shared a study actually on vitamin E coming from a synthetic version of vitamin E versus a food-based version of vitamin E being twice as bioavailable and usable by the body. And so what I ultimately did was this. I identified these different nutrients to help to regenerate my tissues that I was not getting in my diet. If you're not giving your body the raw materials to make your tissues, it's going to do a patchwork job. So I started to eat all these foods that have these compounds. And within six weeks, this is results not typical, by the way.

1:09:25So I was close to 200 pounds. I'd lost about 16 pounds in that six weeks. And the pain that I'd been experiencing for two years was gone. And let me share this with you, James. I don't usually talk about this. I was terrified. I was terrified. Every step that I took, every time I stood up, I was afraid that it would come back. And so I had to relearn how to be pain-free. And eventually, it was nine months later when I got a scan done and my two herniated discs had retracted and they were in place. And now the light was shining through my discs again, where there was black because of the degeneration.

1:10:07And at 30, my spine was younger than my chronological age. That's not supposed to be possible. But this is what we're talking about with whether it's our brain cells and our cognitive function, whether it's our physical body. Not only can we slow down the degradation process, but there is some potential, according peer-reviewed data and my life experience to even reverse it. So let me ask you this. Like you mentioned about supplements versus the bioavailability in food. Like what is the, like I, for instance, take vitamin D supplements every morning. And I don't know what the measurements mean.

1:10:47I take like 10 ,000 IU versus a vitamin D3. I don't even know what any of those letters mean or numbers, but I didn't, it, I think it helped me through COVID and I don't really get colds a lot and so on. So it seems like it works a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of vitamin D3 supplements are coming from like natural sources. They're coming from a lot of times people don't realize this, but sheep coming from sheep's wool. All right. So it's really fascinating that, you know, it's kind of that closer proximity to something natural. There are some vegan versions of it that come from certain forms of mushrooms and things like that.

1:11:29But we've got to keep in mind that our ancestors were eating food to be able to get these nutrients. And so we want to go food first and also allow supplements to be supplemental in that because in particular during COVID, for example, there are, and I'm not exaggerating, there are dozens. There's over 30 studies, including randomized placebo-controlled studies looking at vitamin D dramatically reducing the incidence of severity of symptoms, hospitalizations. The data exists, and there's a ton. It's ridiculous how many studies. And I'm not saying that because I want it to be true. It's just what is.

1:12:12I wouldn't have cared if it was any different, but that's what the data says. And so with that being said, there are spot things for us to supplement, but let's look at what have our genes expected us to do the longest. And for many of us, it's going to be, not for many of us, for all of us, but we got to adjust our conditions today, but we make vitamin D through sun exposure. It actually, you know, those rays interact with cholesterol in our bodies and convert through a process that's remarkable. Your kidneys are involved. Your liver is involved. There's all these processes to make natural vitamin D that is, again, made for your receptor sites because it's made in you by you.

1:12:55So you can't overdose, underdose, like your body knows what to do if we're getting that sun exposure. But guess what? The sun is our enemy now as well. You know, the sun is trying to kill you. and it's so crazy. Like we go to these extremes and we don't question and just stop and think like, wait a minute, is life on planet earth possible because of that flaming ball of goodness or is it just like straight up trying to murder us? Yeah, like why do you think the authorities, is it just happens to be random or why do you think the authorities basically try to say, don't go outside, don't eat according to this food pyramid, which means eight servings of pasta a day And, you know, why do they screw us all up like that?

1:13:41We want to crack this open. I mean, all right, let me share this. Let me start with this. And, you know, I work to always be a person who is thinking in terms of being balanced in my perspective. And so whenever, and this is something I would encourage other people to do, but it's very hard. But if you have a piece of data affirming something you believe, I challenge you, and I often do this. I'll go and look at something that a published piece of data that's done well, that denies what I believe to be true by this paper over here. Because this is the thing about today. There is something to affirm everything right now.

1:14:28All right. And so the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. The problem is when we get to these extremes and we think that, you know, every this is all wrong and this is all right. And so with all that being said, just looking at logic here, and I'm a big fan of looking at results. Here in the United States, just from last year, we had$4.2 trillion invested in healthcare. $4.2 trillion. Far more than any modern industrialized nation. Far more. We're like in a different stratosphere. And yet we have bottom tier results. Of all these other modern societies, we're at the bottom, all right, or near the bottom.

1:15:18But yet we spend so much. And so again, there's a paradox. There's a mismatch here. Something's not adding up. And so what I'm pointing to this to say is that why is this like this? Well, unfortunately, if you're going to bet on something, something to invest in, in the United States right now that's going to definitely return you money in a very volatile time, bet on sickness, bet on disease of people. It is one of the most lucrative things that you can get involved in. And pharmaceutical companies are just, I mean, they're crushing it, crushing it. And again, this could be from the perspective of trying to help people, right?

1:15:58And there are many people being in this field for 21 years and being open. And actually I've been at, like when I'm talking about this stuff, I've been in these different situations, you know, and having this outreach and conversations, you know, with pharmaceutical companies, you know, I'm in all these really unique places, whether I'm like doing a guest lecture at the neuroscience department in NYU or I'm working at Google. I've been in all these different places and I could see there's a lot of good people trying to do good and help people. And we have a system that values above all returning those profits to the shareholders, shareholder value.

1:16:43It is a business first. and why would they be in the business of people not having diseases to treat? That is stupid. It's plumb dumb, right? And not matter of fact, by the way, we don't want to just cure something. We don't want to have a one-time customer. That is stupid. Having repeat customers, having people on a lot of stuff, this revolving door of medication. And a lot of times, a lot of these apparent new innovations in drugs. And this is just how it is. A lot of these things have this apparent innovation, but most of them are not better than what's already on the market. It's just a reframing of things so that they can not go into, you know, where things can be put into generic versions and lose out on money, you know?

1:17:29And so there's not a big vested interest in having a healthy population that would be at this point, suicide for our economy, because we have an economy right now that is dependent on illness. It's like they create sickness in order for, you know, the economy to benefit through the pharma. They create war so we could sell tons of, you know, what is it? It's like every soldier is like$17 ,000 a month to equip with military equipment. And so somebody makes every dollar of that. And so I, you know, again, I'm not, everybody knows I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all, but it is what it is. Like somebody makes money on all these things.

1:18:08And whether it's intentional or not, we don't know. But like you said, if nobody was sick, the farm industry would go bankrupt. So you got to start to wonder. And you mentioned something earlier, this is ultimately related, but you mentioned the dark cherries. And what did you say? First of all, I've never heard of dark cherries. I don't know why I've never eaten them. But what did you say they had in them? Anthocyanins is one of the compounds. Yeah. And they've been found, I shared the study in the book that they've been found to actually target fat cells and could potentially shrink fat cells.

1:18:44And so in this book, you have lots of instances like that where you're identifying these foods and what it's almost like this supplement does this, but with these foods, there's tons of different supplements inside each food. So there's lots of different things these foods do. And then you weave it together into recipes. And what I like in the book too, it's not just the recipes. It's like, this is why it's important to cook them with your family. This is why it's important to socialize while you're eating, you know, with your family and friends and neighbors and so on. I'll tell you in, I think in the past 20 years, I've upgraded my diet.

1:19:20Like I don't eat fast food at all. I don't eat three meals a day. I probably eat like one and a half to two meals a day. I don't know why. But I never cook. I order out almost every night. And we eat dinner as a family watching TV. So that's our routine. And probably that has to change at some point. There's all these habits that have to change. And it's very difficult to do that. I get excited thinking about it, but then I run out of steam after a little while because I got to start slowly with these things somehow. But I love the recipes. I've tried some of these recipes and they taste really good.

1:20:01Yeah. That's the magic too. I'm a big fan of food. Growing up in the culture that I grew up in, flavor is huge. It's such a huge aspect of food and enjoyment. And working as a nutritionist for so many years, I would unfortunately kind of take stuff away from people that they liked and replace it of things of less value. And so quickly, fortunately, I learned that that wasn't the way to go about things because people want change, but they don't want to change that much to get the change. And so I started finding a soft place for people to land and to really work on how can we upgrade what they're doing using real food.

1:20:41And so like with your goal, for example, with cognitive function, we do know a ton of specific nutrients. I mentioned those omega-3s earlier, for example. So we've got a couple of studies and some of them are in the book as well on omega-3 supplementation, improving recall, improving reaction time. And one of the studies that I noted was actually using MRIs or fMRIs and looking at the human brain, they found that people who are consuming less than four grams of EPA and DHA specifically, these are animal-based omega-3s a day, have the highest rate of brain shrinkage. They're losing their gray matter.

1:21:20All right. And gray matter matters. Wow. So I eat a lot of salmon for instance, and that's filled with omega-3s, right? Right. And here's the thing though, with that being said, we've all had a nice grilled salmon, you know, that's nice, but that might not do it for everybody to be consistent. And by the way, one of the studies that I noted in the book is published in the journal Neurology. They found that people who eat just one seafood meal per week do in fact perform better on cognitive skills tests than people who don't eat at least one seafood meal per week. So we take that delicious salmon, which in about an eight ounce serving, you can get five grams of your omega threes.

1:21:58So let me ask you this, Sean. I eat salmon almost every day. That's the problem. Okay. No, I mean, that's not the problem. Let me rephrase this. So that exactly leads to it. Like, okay, for somebody like yourself, I don't know if you're, are you comfortable eating the same thing over and over again? Yeah. I think you are. Yeah. That is your personality type, like if this thing works, I just keep doing it. You were doing stand-up six nights a week. You're different. I like doing the same thing every day. You're different, right? Where some other people, they might be like, okay, this grilled salmon is a wrap.

1:22:31Let's create this into some interesting ways. And one of my favorite recipes you mentioned in the book is the salmon burgers. That recipe is out of this world delicious and you're getting all of those nutrient inputs from that salmon and also other complementary foods that support cognitive health as well. And so that's really the target is like, you know, let's create some diversity here. But even with that, specifically with salmon, okay, what are some other food sources that we can get these omega-3s, DHA and EPA? Also, I mean, there's a ton of other different types of fatty fish, by the way, you know, mackerel, you know, sardines and stuff like that.

1:23:08There's so many different types from small fish to big fish. But salmon has really gotten all the shine, and rightfully so. Here's why salmon is so remarkable, is that it has astaxanthin. Not to be mistaken with the anthocyanins earlier, but astaxanthin is this kind of like red pigment, that's how you can identify it, that protects the omega-3s from degradation, even when cooking. That's why salmon has that little extra magic with it. But egg yolks, you can find a really good source of omega-3s. you can find this in grass-fed beef as well. You know, there's many other foods, but seafood really is top tier when it comes to getting those omega-3s in.

1:23:50Yeah, so I feel like I've got that covered. Like, I mean, usually when I eat salmon, I eat it raw because I'll have sushi or something like that. So I'm not - Now, here's the other thing. This is for you. This is what I want to get to today as well because the omega-3s might not be the issue, but it's also the processing and your cells being able to communicate with each other, something called signal transduction. Omega-3s are critical in that because they're made into structural fats in the brain, but the magic doesn't happen without very specific minerals, all right? Namely, electrolytes. So these are minerals that carry an electric charge.

1:24:31And researchers at McGill University found, for example, that sodium functions as a quote on off switch for certain neurotransmitters in the brain that it you know again for your cognitive function but also protect your brain against neurodegenerative diseases and degradation and so if you're not getting ample and this is the here's where the the issue happens because we hear sodium like why salt like i thought you're supposed to watch your salt. I'm not talking about sodium salt. That's one kind of salt, by the way. We call table salt sodium salt, but it's also chloride. There's a combination of sodium and chloride.

1:25:12There's multiple forms of sodium. There's multiple forms of magnesium, multiple forms of potassium, all these key electrolytes. Calcium, what I was deficient in, And that's the, it's not just one. There are multiple forms of all of these things. This is why food is so special because it has a diversity. But if I'm taking a supplement to try to get my, you know, fill in the blank, am I getting the right form of it that my body is screaming for to run these processes? So with that being said, one of the things that I might even have you supplement. So I want you to target more electrolyte rich foods for sure, which generally going to be you know, fruits in particular have a really great source of electrolytes, but I would actually - Yeah, I don't have a lot of fruit.

1:25:58Yeah. All right. I knew. All right. I got to get on that. Some diversity of fruits, but also I would probably even jump in here and recommend an electrolyte supplement for you, but one that is giving you the electrolytes and not unnecessary sugar, which this is the last piece of this that I want to share. It's not just about adding in the things. It's about avoiding the things that create the damage, right? So here's the thing. The human brain is about 2 % of our body's mass, but it can consume about 25 % of our calories. And researchers at Harvard found that your brain will gladly sop up 50 % of the glucose from any meal that you eat.

1:26:39It is a very glucose-driven, hungry organ through our evolution, but we never came across a lot of sugar at one time. Not very often. In our society today, it's every day, all day. But our brains have not changed. They're still going to be sucking up all that. And so now we have this epidemic of what's been labeled type 3 diabetes, aka Alzheimer's disease, where we have insulin resistance taking place in the brain. Yeah. I've read some stuff about that, that Alzheimer's is linked to diabetes now. Yes. So avoiding obnoxious amounts of ultra processed sugar, adding in key electrolytes and a great electrolyte supplement for you, I think would be pretty freaking potent.

1:27:22And I'm going to send you a link for one after we wrap up. That'd be great. And also, you know, nutrient dense foods that also contain naturally occurring electrolytes, but we want to avoid Gatorade, Powerade, all that crap that I grew up. See, that's what I've been doing. I've been buying Like on the day of a tournament, I'll get Powerade because I thought that would keep the electric lights going, you know, throughout the day. But it doesn't work. I totally run out of steam in the late afternoon. Like I start to run. I just completely start to collapse. Are you getting the sweetened ones? It's blue.

1:27:55I got the blue flavor. So it's got to be sweet. Yes. So the sugar is going to have a counter effect, especially in your energy. You know, it's just inherent. because again, you're going to get this glucose spike. Your brain is going to fast metabolize and stuff and you're going to crash. And you're going to condition your brain cells to want that or to need that until we kind of work out of it. But also the dyes, how's that blue? Some of these food dyes have been targeted, peer-reviewed data, creating cognitive dysfunction, leading to ADHD and all these different things. Adult ADHD has skyrocketed.

1:28:36That's one of the main things I was seeing when I was working as a nutritionist was adults coming in who've been diagnosed with adult ADHD. And again, a lot of these things that we're doing just haphazardly trying to do the right thing are causing problems. So what are some other electrolyte foods? Yeah, like I said, anything that's gonna be rich in sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. So just to throw out a few of these, I really like magnesium might be the most, I don't want to, it's kind of like picking your favorite kid. I don't want to do that, but because it runs so much, we've identified over 650 biochemical processes that require magnesium in order for them to happen.

1:29:23So that means like there's 650 things your body can't do or can't do properly without magnesium being involved. It's crazy. As a matter of fact, ATP, what everybody has heard at this point, and even in my college classes, this is the energy currency of the body. No, no, no. That's potential energy. ATP has to be binded with magnesium in order to be active. It's really that important. And for magnesium, for people just to target anything that's green is going to be a good indicator that's going to to be a nice source of magnesium. Not always. Avocado? Avocado is a decent source of magnesium. Absolutely.

1:30:03Green leafy vegetables as well. But funny enough, chocolate is also a really great source of magnesium. But even when we say this, I'm not talking about Three Musketeers and whatever the nougat is. I'm talking about high quality dark chocolate and or just getting cacao nibs, like the real chocolate bean nibs and adding that to your smoothies and stuff like that. So that's one specific electrolyte is a couple of food sources, but we could do this all day. We have this natural tendency, even when you go to a restaurant, to do lime or lemon, that kind of stuff, there's electrolytes in there and they make the water more hydrating, essentially, because water doesn't just go into our cells when we drink it.

1:30:51there are these protein bridges called aquaporins that really, they respond or they require a certain structure of the water. I think a helpful analogy would be when you have that express pass for tolls, just being able to pass through the tolls without slowing down or that ease of access is helpful when the water is structured. And when I say structured, what that means is minerals. Like when people talk about like alkaline water, what makes it alkaline? It's the mineral content of the water. There are certain minerals that are alkaline. There are certain minerals that are more acidic. That's what this really boils down to.

1:31:40So hydrating your cells itself, adding a little lemon or lime or whatever. There's all these kind of fruit infusions you could do, berries and, but all of that stuff really helps to make the water more hydrating. I did not know that. That's very interesting. I always wondered why people want lime with their water. I'm going to have to start having that more. Yeah. And I added in the book too, there's a spa, the spa water as well, because again, it's just a more hydrating form of water. So, Sean, I just, first off, I really want to say again, these recipes, first off, this book is really well done.

1:32:13The photos of the dishes are beautiful. The quality of the paper or the quality of the book is really high. All the information you put in here about the foods, about the meals, about the diets, about exercise, about everything is just so valuable. But I'm not a natural sort of cook at all. I don't cook, but everything that I've done so far has been easy to make and really delicious. Like this is the only cookbook I could ever say I've really made recipes out of. So otherwise I just put, in the past, I've just like thought up stuff and put stuff together. But this has been a really great experience just going through the cookbook and learning from it.

1:32:57I highly recommend it. But also this discussion, you really like open my eyes to a lot of things. My only fear is that I'm going to say, okay, I'm going to like do all of this and then not do it. yeah so i gotta figure out how to like i don't know i just gotta figure out like what to do first i mean i've been doing these in bits and pieces and i like i said i've been trying to lift weights and but it's like sporadic it's hard for me to get into a habit yeah your your superpower though is like when you get locked into something you're superhuman at that thing and so i think it's just trying to find the leverage point with the strength training whether that is like having a trainer that you actually like, you know, maybe they're funny or maybe they're completely, you know, I don't know, just a complete moron.

1:33:40And you could like, I don't know, finding somebody that is your accountability source as well might be helpful for you because, and also even maybe learning the language of strength training, because it's a whole science, but we tend to see it as this like gym bro, like whatever, that type of thing. But there's like a, this intense, beautiful science. And maybe when you start to learn about like your muscle fiber types and like how this thing could do that thing and you start to like paint a picture and make it more artistic, like it's just finding that psychological leverage for yourself. But yeah.

1:34:15You know, what really helped me actually was, so my stepson was going through some stuff and he started lifting weights every day or like four times a week, something like that. And not only did he get confident as he saw his body transform and it really did start to transform but just in general i just saw his mood improve his his everything improved like his life changed and now he's like now he's into it now he's an addict of weightlifting not a bad not in a bad way but he just does it he goes to the gym and and does it yeah you've got more with his friends he did firsthand anecdotal data right there right there yeah yeah it was really interesting he really he inspired me to, that's when I also started looking into it more and getting the weights and so on, I saw the transformation I had on him.

1:35:03But I'm excited to keep going with the food stuff. I take tons of supplements, but I'm hearing what you're saying about supplements. And it does make sense that it would be more impactful to do this the natural way. And plus I love the food. So there's a lot of good things going on here. And I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. It was great to begin to catch up. We got a lot more catching up to do, but I just want to say the title of the book again. I'll do an intro also that I'll say it in the beginning, but the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook by Shawn Stevenson, author of Eat Smarter, which goes into a lot more of the science and stuff like that about the food.

1:35:44So people should get both, but the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook, 100 Delicious Recipes to Transform Your Health, Fitness, and Connection. Plus, the Model Health Podcast. You can find it everywhere you get podcasts. I highly recommend. And Sean, once again, it's so great to talk. I can't believe it's been six years because COVID interrupted us. We always used to do this in person. Yeah. It's bananas. It's just been like a time vacuum. But like you said, we got a lot of catching up to do and today was fun. So thank you so much this has been awesome yeah i really appreciate it thank you