How to Naturally Boost GLP-1, Reduce Cravings, & Lose Weight Faster - With Dr. Karan Rajan

0:00You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson Stevenson. For more, visit themodelhealthshow.com. The age of fat loss is upon us. But for the age of fat loss to be initiated, it had to be preceded by the age of fat gain. And so as our society is trying to figure this whole thing out, we are also entering the age of fat loss related medications, including the hot on the streets GLP wants. Now, here's the rub, and you're hearing it here probably first. This is just one of many to come because we have a vast array, dozens of other satiety-related hormones. And right now, food manufacturers are proactively trying to find ways to add ingredients to their foods, these ultra-processed foods, to work their way around the GLP-1 medications so that even if you're taking one of these medications, you still wanna have an extra Twinkie or you still wanna have some extra potato chips or Pop-Tarts or Sody Pops, all right?

1:18Food scientists, they're not just gonna take this sitting down, all right, they want you to sit down. Brilliant food scientists are proactively working to find ways to combat these new innovations. And so simultaneously, drug manufacturers are designing more medications to address our other satiety-related hormones. We got so many. Our GLP-1 is just one. We've got adiponectin. We've got CCK. We've got peptide YY. I can go on and on and on. But today, in this very, very special and powerful episode, you're going to hear from a world-renowned physician and surgeon with an expertise on gut health to share with us how we must first and foremost work with our bodies and understanding, remembering that GLP-1 and all these other satiety-related hormones are produced naturally within our bodies if we're doing certain things.

2:18And there are things beyond food that can mess that system up. And so he's going to bring that up as well. But what are those foods that can support our body's natural production of these satiety-related hormones and help to kind of keep in check our hunger-related hormones? All right, there's this beautiful synchronistic dance that's happening when we can get our bodies in a healthy state and create a healthy environment within our own systems. And so he's going to be sharing that, and he's going to be sharing some straight-up crazy stuff that you probably never even think about like eating with your hands.

2:59All right. If you're like, well, what else do you eat with? Do you eat with your feet? Do you eat with a robotic arm? Yes, the robots will be able to feed you. Okay. It's just coming soon. But I mean directly food to hand, not fork, knife, chopstick, food to hand. You're going to hear some interesting data on how this can impact satiety. So really interesting things. And one of the biggest takeaways is understanding this gut brain connection at a whole new level and how our thoughts, how our perception is impacting our satiety. So this is absolutely packed with incredible insights. And without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day.

3:47Dr. Karan Rajan is a world-renowned physician, surgeon, and educator. His compelling and enlightening teaching style has engaged audiences all over the world, and he now reaches over 11 million social media followers. Dr. Karan is also the founder of Loam Science, a company that's pioneering microbiome solutions. He's the host of the Dr. Karan Explorers show and author of the number one Sunday Times bestseller, this book may save your life. Let's dive in this conversation with the one and only Dr. Karan Rajan. We've got Dr. Rajan in the house. How you doing today, man? Thank you so much. It's a beautiful studio and it's great to have a chat with you outside and even here, man, I can tell on the same wavelength.

4:31We should have had everything rolling in advance. Like we've already covered so much ground. Yeah. But, you know, we're existing right now in a a changing paradigm when it comes to medicine, when it comes to nutrition, fitness, you know, a lot of people are interested and that's a great thing. And part of this paradigm is this new innovation, this new wave of GLP one drugs. And I've been talking about this for quite some time. I know that there are others that are, you know, quickly coming down the pike here, addressing other satiety related hormones. And so you being an expert in gut health, I want to ask you about this because with this emerging paradigm, this is related to our satiety, right?

5:17And these are things that our bodies naturally produce. And it's great to have medical interventions as well. Absolutely. But one of the things that I'm learning from you is how our bodies produces stuff in relationship to certain foods that we eat. And so can you talk about, are there any foods that we can eat that can encourage our bodies to produce more things like GLP-1, leptin, CCK, things like that? Yeah, it's a really good point. And whilst I'll caveat this by saying that nothing we eat can be equivalent to a natural ozempic, you know, a lot of people are trying to sell supplements or sell products which are natural ozempic.

5:56That's the caveat and nuance we need to take into account. And so we've got dozens of satiety hormones, right? And from GLP-1s to GIP to amylin receptors, oxintomodulin, CCK, cholecystokinin, peptide YY, there's so many, right? And the food we eat can actually stimulate all these different things. And that can lead to, you know, improved satiety. And in addition to that, not just food, but even the habits and lifestyle things like sleep that we take care of can stimulate other satiety hormones like leptin and ghrelin. You know, whenever you've slept terribly, the levels of ghrelin can go up so you feel hungry the next morning and you overeat calories, which can lead to weight gain long term.

6:39So that's the whole context we're playing in. It's such a complex system. And ultimately, I would say the two food groups which are going to help you most with that satiety, weight loss and appetite hormone stimulation would be fiber and protein, specifically soluble, fermentable fibers, prebiotics, which can have a prebiotic effect on the microbiome, and high protein foods. And, you know, the sort of top tier would be foods which can give you both at the same time, like beans, right? High fiber, high protein. And basically what happens on a microscopic level is that food which is harder to digest and spends more time in the colon being fermented by gut bacteria means there's more stimulation of glp and pyy and leads to longer half-lives and elevation of glp1 which is going to have the best effect and gets as close as possible as we can to those medical interventions that's so powerful but you know this part of the conversation has been left out, right?

7:45The education around like your body has the ability to self-modulate, to find that homeostasis. But we have this paradigm of, you know, ultra processed foods that kind of, you know, throw all this caution to the wind and kind of gum up these systems and disrupt it, disrupt its natural tendencies. But you just said sleep influences it as well. Our movement practices, stress it isn't just this one trick pony like we just got to get this one hormone to do this one thing and it's going to solve all our problems yeah i think even this is a problem with modern medicine as well you've got cardiologists you've got gastroenterologists rheumatologists neurologists endocrinologists all of those are specialists and that's great but we need to stop thinking about the body as individual systems and an interconnected network and a hive mind and so when we're talking about these hormones they're influenced by our mood our brain movement sleep circadian rhythm as well even our microbiome the bacteria living in our gut have to follow and are slave to the circadian rhythm they're sometimes more active in the daylight hours and less active in the nighttime hours so all of these body systems are interconnected And, you know, to your point, one thing is just the one wheel of the car.

9:06You need all the wheels to work to get the car moving. I love this. I love this already. So fiber, protein, our target foods ideally are foods that give you both. Right. So get you someone who could do both. All right. So beans are one. And, you know, I knew that I was going to be talking to you about this. And this is one of the most fascinating studies that I've seen recently. And it speaks directly to your point. And this was published, and we'll put the study up for everybody to see, the Journal of Research and Medical Sciences. And it put study participants on matching reduced calorie diets for three months with one interesting difference.

9:44One group included almonds in their diet while the other group did not. It's a three-month study. After the data was compiled, the folks who included almonds in their diet lost twice as much weight. What? twice as much weight and had a greater reduction in their hip to waist ratio than the almond free group. Now here's what relates to our point. The researchers found greater improvement in insulin sensitivity and GLP-1 in the almond group, right? So there's something special about these natural foods that provide protein, but also provide that dietary fiber. Yeah. Excellent study. Dietary fiber, proteins, other compounds like lignans, which are just hard to digest and also we should mention fiber protein but also healthy fats as well so healthy fats have probably the greatest effect at stimulating cholecystokine in cck and cck slows down gastric emptying the rate at which your stomach empties especially as it's entering the first part of the small intestine the duodenum so you just generally get that increased satiety from a physical point of view.

10:53And one other thing I should mention as well would be flavonoids and polyphenols you get from really darkly colored foods. And this is super interesting that not a lot of people know. Not only do those foods likely have a high antioxidant content and probably high fiber content like raspberries or blueberries, but there is some data suggesting that foods that are rich in their flavonoid content, even things like coffee, have a direct role at upregulating GLP-1 gene expression in the L cells, which are cells which line the colon. So you're getting that direct, they're directly stimulating the gene expression.

11:33So there's more GLP-1 being pumped out in those kinds of foods. Amazing. Oh, this is so good. So good. Are you about that snack life? the paradigm of snacks have changed dramatically in recent years. I grew up, my snacks, animal crackers, little Capri Sun, maybe some random candy from my grandma's purse. You know, she's got the butterscotches and peppermints in there. All right. Of course, got a little, little chips, little cookie. Listen, that's all fine and dandy, but our paradigm of eating candy has really messed us up. And so trying to get healthier, I started having granola bars, right? Had granola bars as a kid as well.

12:17Super sweetened with a picture of a guy with a wig on, you know, looked like one of the founding fathers on the box. You know what I'm talking about. But trying to get healthier, you know, I switch over, I do the granola healthier, lower sugar, or low fat paradigm of these cereal bars, but still really missing the point. And then today we had all these innovations in these newly invented chemical complexes to try to trick our bodies with fake fats or fake sugars. And we end up with a ultra process conglomeration of a new kind. What about something real? What about utilizing the paradigm of a food bar, something on the go, but with all real food ingredients.

13:04And that's what we have with the Paleo Valley Superfood Bars. Not only does it have over eight organic superfoods and collagen-rich, 100 % grass-fed bone broth protein, there are no added sugars or sugar alcohols. They come in a variety of flavors, including red velvet, lemon meringue, apple cinnamon, and what I have right here, dark chocolate chip. These are the only food bars that we keep here at the studio for our team and our guests. And I keep these at home for my family and I travel with these as well. Huge fan of the Paleo Valley Superfood Bars. And right now you get access to 15 % off their amazing superfood bars when you go to paleovalley.com forward slash model.

13:49That's P-A-L-E-O-V-A-L-L-E-Y.com forward slash model for 15 % off their phenomenal superfood bars, plus all of their other incredible snacks and superfood whole food based supplements. So much more. Head over there, check them out, paleovalley.com forward slash model. And now back to the show. When I think of CCK, I also think of spicy foods. Is there a relationship there yeah i would say that spicy foods are interesting because i would say one of like and a lot of the spicy foods may be tied to fatty foods as well right you have like a spicy curry or some tacos that's spicy or some sort of like you know salsa thing where it's fat and spice so that may be the sort of overlap there but also spicy food uh you know most spicy food contains a chemical called capsaicin and capsaicin directly binds to these receptors called trpv1 receptors and our body can't really tell the difference between heat in temperature and spice we don't have like a receptor for spice and we kind of correlate it with heat and so when you eat something spicy your body thinks there's like an irritant or something hot which actually has you know the same mimicking effect of feeling full so when you eat something spicy you probably feel more full even if it's the same amount of calories as something which is not spicy that's fascinating i know a lot of people have had that experience of just having that spice in your system and just kind of quenching or slowing down your desire to eat more food right just that heat is enough to just be like i'm good right so it's a natural thing that we kind of experience but we might not think that much about so maybe add a little bit more spice to your food oh Oh, yeah.

15:37And you know, there's something cool that when I was growing up, I didn't, I always thought it was weird. But now knowing the science of it, I get it. Because when my grandma used to just cut me like a plate of fruits, you know, pears or kiwis or guava, she used to sprinkle some chili and salt and just other like spicy seasoning on it. So I'd have these like sweet fruits with some spice on them and it would keep me so full. In addition to the fiber, it's just that contrast in flavoring. And yes, spice, 100 percent, even like a spicy sauce, like, you know, like a Tabasco sauce, you know, it can fill you up.

16:12And the additional benefit is Tabasco sauce is actually a fermented food. Look at that. You know, I just actually cut up some mango for my son this morning along with his breakfast. and you know that's one of those things that i haven't been exposed to which is like putting the spice with the fruit right and so like my wife is she's from kenya and she'll she'll dabble in that you know having some some spice along with the fruit but it's just like so we don't tend to match that up like a lot of people in my culture yeah it's such a weird thing and i think in the western world we like simple flavors and simple combinations and actually you know places in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in South Asia, there's such a contrast in flavors and colors and texture.

16:59And beyond just taste, that provides dietary diversity, which ultimately is, you know, the beneficiary is you, your gut health and your microbes. Yeah, because we're trying to get these inputs, right? We're trying to get all of these different foods. Every time you have a different food, you're getting different inputs. You're taking a bit of that foods microbiome that data is like a file sharing and so how can you get and this is where the science is and i'd like to ask you about this is affirming that we need to try to target a certain amount of different plant food specifically plant food inputs each week to really help to because our different microbes are looking for different inputs yeah and and just before i answer that like to expand on the point you just made about this kind of different inputs it's so different that even the same food in two different countries can have a different microbiome composition right like for example why is the coffee or the coffee beans grown in different countries like ethiopia or costa rica or even the usa why are they different because each of the coffee bean farmers in those different countries have different skin microbiomes and when they're treating them and growing them and cultivating them their skin microbiomes go in the coffee beans So different microbes are fermenting those beans, producing different flavor profiles.

18:19And so even if you go to Italy and have mozzarella cheese from Italy and mozzarella cheese from the US, there's different microbes being made and involved in that fermentation process. So actually the health benefits are slightly different. And why we need dietary diversity is because we have different bacterial species throughout our colon. They're like a they're picky eaters. They each like to preferentially eat different foods. So bacteria A might like to eat this food over bacteria B that likes to eat a different food. And when they get those different foods, they then produce different compounds, different short chain fatty acids.

18:57They perform different roles. And if you get more diversity, you get more of these functions, like more gifts unlocked. And so that's the key with diversity. Oh, wow. Holy smokes. and when you talked about the diversity of just getting food from different places, the same food from different places, and you went right to skin. Like, I didn't know you were going to go there to that input, but we don't think about that, right? Let alone the soil, the atmosphere, the environment, the temperature, the, you know, cross-pollination, whatever, all these other inputs, but literally the people handling the food makes that food different.

19:32You know, we think about the microbiome, but you just mentioned, you know, the aerobiome, the different microbiome in the environment, in the air. Even me coming here to see you today, we are exchanging our different microbiomes by, you know, shaking hands, just speaking to each other, being in a room with, you know, two other people as well. And that's wild. And that correlates so well with the data that we have epidemiological data, which suggests that, especially in childhood, children who grow up in non-urban environments around pets with older siblings have stronger more resilient immune systems and microbiomes which leads them to have a lower risk of autoimmune diseases and allergy risk compared to kids who've grown up in you know households where they're the only child or in urban environments where there's more pollution and less nature and animals and don't have pets so that's because of environmental exposure that's so powerful you know it was such a beautiful design of this whole thing and this is largely an invisible process right of course we've got wonderful technology where we can see some of this activity now but it's just keeping in mind like to as you just mentioned like having this microbial file sharing it basically it's kind I liken it to like a light workout you know for your immune system and just getting more inputs like allowing your system to kind of pick up new data like how do I respond to this and interact and even take certain things on and to share certain things as well.

21:07And this is how we really evolved as a species. And so we need each other. We need to be proactive at having some of this file sharing. And today, more than ever, we're more and more isolating ourselves and going, spending much, much more time indoors. And it's wonderful. We've got a lot of cool stuff indoors, but we need to also get out, go to different places, travel, right? All of these things are really great for, And it's reminding me, we've got multiple studies now on how travel extends your lifespan, right? And it just gets me thinking about what about the invisible stuff, right? Let alone the experiences and the novelty is so good for the brain.

21:46But what about the microbial impact of being somewhere else? That phrase, file sharing, is just so crazy good. And you mentioned like we're more isolated these days. And that correlates with this steady erosion we're experiencing in our own microbiome. Our collective microbiomes are experiencing a loss of biodiversity. You know, we're losing these species over time. And then if you compare that with some of these non-industrial population groups around the world, the Yamamami tribe in the Amazon, Hadza tribe in Tanzania, certain tribes in North and South India. one of the things they have one of many things they have in addition to high fiber intakes and all those things is they have this community you know they're tribes they're very close cohorts of people and they're sharing microbes with each other because they're in such close proximity to their mother their father their children their nephews their in-laws they're all just living in kind of tightly packed spaces and we are not and we're not benefiting from that microbial file sharing.

22:49Wow. I want to go back to flavor because you said something and I don't want everybody to miss this. You mentioned that spice isn't something that we taste, right? And I know that there are many people who are just like, I could taste spice. Can you talk about the distinction there? Like how are we not tasting the spice, but we are experiencing something spicy? so it's a weird one so flavor is not one input your percept it's a perception right and your perception is built through multiple sensory inputs so and there's lots of studies that professor charles spence from oxford university has done on just like perception so if i give you like you know a pringle right you expect that pringle to be snap crunchy and that adds to the perception of the taste but then if i give you another pringle that's like flat it's a bit soggy that would affect your taste perception of that thing so by that we know that the perception starts in the brain auditory inputs the snap of a chocolate bar the crunch of an apple then you've got the smell that adds to flavor most of flavor comes from the smell right the sort of nasal input of that thing and then there's obviously like the the texture of something is it smooth is it crunchy is it kind of like crinkly all of these things are important and then you add in your memory of that thing nostalgia and how it made you feel some emotional impact so what you taste directly on your tongue in your taste receptors and taste buds is one of multiple inputs.

24:34So when you give me like a spicy enchilada or, you know, just like some Tabasco sauce on something, I'm putting multiple inputs, all of my senses in that one thing. So spice is not merely just that binding of the capsaicin to the TRPV1 receptors on your tongue, but all of these other inputs, which made you think, oh, that's a spicy food. This is so crazy. You know, this is going beyond, again, just the superficial, you know, again, calories in, calories out, which is what I was taught in my university education. And it was kind of the end of the story. But just to realize how your perception impacts, how the calories you associate with impacts your body.

25:17And this reminds me of that famous milkshake study with Alia Crum and her team out of Stanford and just blending up this batch of milkshakes. And we'll put the study up for everybody to see. And basically it's, they're all the milkshakes are the same, same amount of calories, but labeling them differently, right? Putting on some of them labeling that this is a high calorie indulgent milkshake at several calories more than what's actually in there. And then having other labels that say it's a sense of shake, it's a sensible milkshake, saying there's several hundred calories less. And when study participants drank their respective milkshakes, the people who drank what they believed to be an indulgent milkshake, right?

25:55More calories than what they would think, they produced more satiety hormones, meaning they were less likely to be hungry soon after. Whereas the people who had the sensible milkshake, same amount of calories, their ghrelin levels, leptin and ghrelin, their ghrelin being this kind of glorified hunger hormone, barely changed at all. So they were hungry quickly thereafter, right? So just their belief about what they were drinking had an impact on how their body was associated with those calories. And this leads me back to even mentioning the Pringles. And I don't know if you know this, there was like a egg Nobel prize awarded for this Pringles study.

26:35The sound experiment? The sound experiment. That was Professor Charles Spence. That was the one. Yeah. Yeah. So you already know it, man. It's so weird. Just the crunch, the sound of that crunch affecting your satiety and how enjoyable you think a meal is that is so powerful right so smell sound touch all of our senses influence potentially our satiety our satisfaction what we're eating and so two things and what that tells you is that digestion doesn't begin here in your mouth it begins in your brain so right now like sean what's your favorite meal what's your favorite meal Oh, man. Like, you know, three six to five days.

27:15Yeah. Like something that your mom made or your wife makes. Like, what's your favorite food? Man, that's like asking who's my favorite kid. Well, it's just one of your favorite meals. Okay. Oh, man. Like, if I asked you right now, you'd want it and you'd eat it. Okay. Let me think. All right. This is so tough. Let me just. My wife. Oh, I got it. Yeah. I got it. So just something that I've had a taste for recently is the sweet potato enchilada casserole. OK. So you love that meal and you love how it tastes. If you're thinking about it right now, your digestive juices are beginning to activate. I feel it.

27:59You know, you start to salivate. You're sort of, you know, parotid glands and your salivary glands are working, pumping out some of that saliva, you know, and your intestinal motility is starting to go. that's the engine that thought of a food of like a nice pumpkin pie or apple pie or something just the thought of that is enough to get you salivating right i'm telling you hey sean we're gonna go and get some food afterwards you're already like hungry and you get that hunger so that is digestion beginning at just the thought of a meal of a certain food so it's already turned on then right so that is another layer adding to the perception and flavor of something and then yeah it's all these sort of multiple sensory inputs that go into that and then the final thing would be as you mentioned touch as well in cultures where you predominantly eat with your hands that provides a more mindful eating and digestive food experience like in ayurvedic culture and ayurvedic like old and ancient indian medicine you eat with your hands and you don't have any other distractions and you're directly making the connection between the gut and brain when you're eating with your hands because your fingers can sense the temperature so you can slow down when you're eating when you're not you know eating with like you know drinking something directly or eating with like fork and knife with your hands there's only a certain amount of food that you can put in right in one go so you're naturally pacing things down as well and you can really connect mindfully with that food and it's like a better digestive experience when you have all of those different senses playing a part it's so fascinating like this has got me thinking about my mother-in-law who I know she's listening right now and she's from Kenya.

29:41And, you know, I've seen her, of course, eat with her hands several times. And, and my, uh, my son, my youngest son as well, he'll like eat with his hands frequently. Even when you're not around my Mukame, he does this and he's just like, you know, I'm part Kenyan. So this is what we do. This is what we do. And in our culture, like, this is something that is not really seen. Now, here's the thing. Even as I say that there are certain foods that are socially acceptable to eat with your hands, right? Like picking up a slice of pizza. But there are people, snobby people, cut it with a fork when they don't need to.

30:11No disrespect. But, you know, there's certain handheld foods that you can eat with your hands while other stuff is seen to be like, that's not appropriate, right? It's just not a part of our culture. And so to have this other awareness, like, again, it's so much easier if you've got an apparatus, like a spoon or fork, to just shovel food into your mouth, right? And it's so funny. Last night we were watching Stranger Things, the most recent season, because the new season, the final season is coming. And this one of the characters, Hopper, he is in this situation. And no, spoiler alert, by the way, if you haven't seen season four, but he's in prison and he makes his grand escape.

30:55I'm not saying if it works out or not, but he happens upon and he's been in prison in like a Russian like military prison. and he finds this crate of peanut butter and he he doesn't just go in and start shoveling the peanut butter with his hands once he has that first bite he literally puts it in his mouth and it's just oh he savors it even though he's starving and you could tell the actor he actually did lose a lot of weight for that role right for that for this part of the story and he just was just taking you know dollops of this peanut butter and just enjoying it right because for me i'd be like if he's eating with his hand, he's starving, like he's just going to shovel in his mouth.

31:33But really our kind of innovations can take us away in another step from really being present with our food. Yeah. And I think that's to our detriment because, you know, if we don't slow down our mealtimes, we may miss some of those satiety signals. And then that's the risk when you overeat, right? You need some time for the digestion to happen for the GLP-1, the the whole cascade of hormones to begin their release. And then if you overeat, you might miss those signals and then continue to overeat as well. And then, you know, is that one contributor to our crisis now with, you know, obesity rates rising?

32:13So fascinating. All right, I want to ask you, in this context, with these foods that check those two boxes, fiber and protein, there have been controversy around these foods recently, right? And even though humans have been eating beans and nuts for thousands of years, today though, in particular, let's talk about beans because they have certain compounds that can be injurious to human biology. Let's talk about how do we prepare these foods? How do we actually prepare our beans so that we reduce? And can you talk about what are some of these kind of concerning or potentially problematic compounds?

32:58So I think some of the concerns around like plant foods, like a villain that a lot of people quote are these kind of anti-nutrients, which could prevent the absorption of other things or, you know, phytates, which could also affect the absorption of certain things. And, you know, like in small amounts, they don't really affect us in the sort of quantities that we eat them. You know, ultimately, the food is a beneficial food. But, you know, you're not going to be eating raw beans. Most people are not going to be eating raw beans. So actually, if you're boiling them, if you're steaming them, if you're pressure cooking them and you're soaking them, you're not only reducing the amount of all of these anti-nutrients, which are not harmful to begin with, but actually you're reducing their FODMAP content.

33:42And FODMAPs are certain compounds within the foods which are highly fermentable and can trigger the guts of people who have sensitive guts. And so actually when you soak and cook your beans, pressure cooking is like probably one of the ideal ways, you not only increase the volume of the raw bean, which can add more to your satiety physically, but also you reduce the amount of some of these, you know, compounds which could affect, you know, bioavailability of other things that you eat as well. Amazing, amazing. You know, obviously digestion is, to say that it's critical for our survival as a species is an understatement.

34:23In fact, it's so important that, can you share what is the first part of the human body that develops first once the egg is fertilized and we're developing as a human being? What's developed first? You know, I'm biased because, you know, my background is like gut surgery and GI surgery, but the science doesn't lie. And when you are just a cluster of cells in your mom's uterus, the very first orifice to begin developing is known as the blastopore, which then becomes to form the anus. so we are essentially an arsehole when we start and the gut and the digestive system is one of the first organs or digestive groups or the digestive system is one of the first organs to develop so everybody starts off as an asshole and then we work to become something other than well hopefully yeah we evolved beyond that point yeah some people just stay that's incredible incredible so you know just the the development of our gut and then in our nervous system as well intimately connected and so we have this now it's a big part of our lexicon and education grateful grateful for that the gut brain connection and we are we're still just scratching the surface on this and understanding it but can you talk a little bit about how what we're putting into our gut affects what's going on upstairs which is affecting what's going on with our brain yeah so if you look at some of those anatomical diagrams where it just shows like the nervous system of the human body you will see this huge cord running through almost the entirety of the body and that's the largest nerve in the body the vagus nerve goes directly from the brain all the way through to the gut and then spreads out like a root into all of the different aspects of the GI and the gut organs, right, from the intestines, the liver and beyond.