Why One Diet Doesn't Work for Everyone: Nutrigenomics, Microbiome Diversity & More

24:07Shawn Stevenson:It's just like, no, you just need some salt, you know? And, um, you know, so going to Whole Foods after you've been plant-based for maybe five years and you get your carton of eggs and you put the kale over the top of it, you know, because you're embarrassed. You know, I had to get over that really quickly and just be authentic. Because one of the worst things that we can do, I think in this life is just to be honest and to again, to act like we got it figured out. And there's a natural tendency that once again, once we find something that's working for us to really dig our heels in. And so it's just a natural evolution over time if you're open and honest to say, hey, like, and I'm at the place now where, and especially just witnessing the last couple of years where I really understand throughout time, some of our greatest thinkers, you know, whether it's, uh, you know, Socrates or, you know, Gandhi, I really think that they came to a place in their perspective, really realizing that we don't know.

25:08Shawn Stevenson:Like we really don't know anything. We're spinning around on this blue sphere with this like perfect conditions for life to exist in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy amidst billions of other galaxies, not planets, galaxies. And we think that we know what this is all about. Like we have no idea. And the little bit that we do know, it just, we grab onto it because it gives us a sense of certainty and control in a universe that is so complex. And one of the things that I've really been, that I've really been working to push into popular culture. And it's so interesting. And I know you experienced this as well, that the right people start to show up who are championing this message as well.

25:58Shawn Stevenson:So I feel that the microbiome is having a moment right now for sure. But where things are going right next or it's happening now is circadian medicine and really paying attention to how we're lined up and in sync with the 24-hour solar day. Not just the diurnal and nocturnal patterns of the Earth, but we're lined up with the entire solar system. And within each of our cells are these clocks. And I remember at my university and hearing something like circadian timing, right? Your biological clock. And it just sounded very like not real. It sounded like a very like, I don't know, like a horoscope or something.

26:45Shawn Stevenson:It's just like, I don't know about that. Not to disrespect horoscopes if people are, you know, super into that. There's by recent validity in it. But for me, it's just like, that doesn't make sense. But today we know that our biological clocks are essentially their functional genes and proteins that literally control the expression of other genes and proteins. They're controlling everything about us, depending on what time of day it is and whether or not we're synced up with that. Because how can we kind of detach ourselves which we can't really do that but we can try to manufacture essentially a second daytime just by keeping all the lights on in our house in the evening and you know what being on our screens and the whole thing and it throws a monkey wrench into this clock and the gears start to get a little bit chunky and clunky and what manifests is dysfunction chaos disease and so getting ourselves in alignment with that you know to the best of our ability and there are certain things that sync it up like so quickly.

27:43Shawn Stevenson:Andrew Huberman, I think you might've even had him on recently. I had a conversation with him. Working on it right now. Okay. Well, we'll make sure that we get that locked in ASAP. So he came in into my studio and he was like, Sean, big fan. Right? And I was like, I know because you're talking about the same things that I'm talking about because I'm a big fan as well. And we're talking about getting up and going, getting that early morning sun exposure. Just that one simple thing. I wrote about this in Eat Smarter. I'm sorry, Sleep Smarter, my first book. I wrote about this. And we've got, this was Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience.

28:18Shawn Stevenson:Just getting up and getting some early morning sun exposure actually helps to kind of sync up. I struggle to use the word reset your cortisol rhythm. And it helps to lower your cortisol in the evening. Getting sunlight in the morning helps to lower your cortisol in the evening. And we don't want cortisol high in the evening. Clinically, we call these folks tired and wired where the cortisol is too high in the evening, too low in the morning. And cortisol being elevated in the evening, that's a surefire way to disrupt your sleep quality. You might be unconscious, but you're not going to go through your sleep cycles effectively.

28:53Shawn Stevenson:And so something as simple as that, or just getting up and doing some activity, right, in the first part of your day, it's going to help to kickstart that cortisol rhythm and let your body get synced up again. But we could throw a monkey wrench in even that activity if we're on our screens late into the evening. And so, you know, all that to say, this is where I really feel the next thing that people are going to hear more and more about is circadian medicine. And even the timing of certain medications, the timing of certain drugs. I'm sorry, medication, drugs, synonymous. Certain supplements.

29:27Shawn Stevenson:The timing of our exercise. You know, everything about us. What time we're eating. Obviously, that is huge right now. That's initially why I brought this up, because even the timing of when we're eating food, that might be the biggest proactive circadian synchronization thing that we can do as a human. And it has so many different health ramifications when we're deciding to eat or to, quote, break our fast. So, yeah. Lots to get into here. I want to stick on the circadian medicine piece since we're in that right now. and I want to get into some of the nuances here. You talked about getting that daylight first thing in the morning.

30:09Let's go really detailed, really granular here for people. This might be brand new to them. When exactly do they go out in the morning? How long do they need to spend? And what if they're in an environment where there isn't a lot of daylight or they're at a time of year and they're in a more northern climate like me in Canada where, you know, it's winter time and it's harder to get outside. Are there certain things we can do like lights we can get for inside or certain hacks we can use to work around that? Absolutely. Absolutely.

30:43Shawn Stevenson:So a couple of little tidbits here. And I just want to affirm this also, this recent study, this was cited in Nature Reviews Endocrinology. Here's a direct quote. It says, disruption of the circadian system can alter microbiome communities and perturb host metabolism, energy homeostasis, and inflammatory pathways, which lead to metabolic syndrome. So they're talking about this circadian timing system being gummed up, leading to the advent of one, probably the biggest issue underlying so many other problems, which is metabolic dysfunction, right? So, and of course, a lot of our colleagues have been passing around and it's been on the public consciousness that only about 88 % of our citizens here in the United States are metabolically healthy.

31:25Shawn Stevenson:and so with that said that synchronization depending on where you are in the world like i'm i moved from missouri to los angeles in 2019 at the end of 2019 you know just in time for the fun to start all right that's uh i'm being sarcastic with the fun um but being in missouri we got really we got extremes of everything right spring is spring in it winter full-on white walkers. All right. Summertime, amazing, but hot, crazy hot. You know, the fall, gorgeous, wonderful falls. With that said, winters are not fun to go out your door in Missouri. You know, we can get into the negatives. And so having the audacity, like go outside and get sun exposure is not really viable, especially for the average person.

32:16Shawn Stevenson:Here's the good news. simply simply getting exposure even ambient light coming through even your windows into the room is going to help to sync up because there's something about sunlight that is unlike any other light and we cannot replicate it i don't care what anybody says we have all these different therapies we got red light there great but is we cannot remotely get close to dialing in what the sun is doing. So with that said, though, if you want to sit by a window and allow the sun to hit your skin, that's a different conversation because it can distort the UV. There's UVA and there's UVB.

32:57Shawn Stevenson:And about 95 % of the rays that actually reach us, that's UVA. UVB is what's needed to make to trigger the cholesterol process, the synthesis into vitamin D, right? So, but glass distorts that, right? So we're getting hit with a lot more of this kind of UVA, which can lead to some abnormal stuff with our skin that we might not want. This is not to say that you can't have that happen, you know, a few minutes and you're going to die or something. It's not like that. But ideally, if you want to get sun exposure on your skin, you want to be in the nude. You want to be skin to sun. All right. But again, just opening your windows, you know, opening the blinds, should I say, and allowing that ambient light into your room is going to be just fine.

33:45Shawn Stevenson:However, we were talking about building resilience. So if it is 20 degrees and the crazy thing is after moving to LA, I've seen how I've become more baby-like. All right. When it's like 50 degrees outside and i'm like shaking it makes no sense jesse now of course like you know i do my cold cryotherapy all that stuff but just initially like i would go out for my morning walk and when it started to get a little brisk i just see like my body's just not used to this cold exposure when just going out for a walk so now i gotta like put on a hoodie and the whole thing and building resilience means i can hey let me go out maybe go up on my roof or go outside for five ten minutes embrace this cold that my ancestors lived in and just, you know, get, I could stare off into the horizon where the sun is at.

34:40Shawn Stevenson:You don't got to stare directly at the sun, especially after it's kind of rising up to a certain point in the sky, you don't want to stare at the sun. But just staring off into the direction of the sun, 10 minutes, maybe I'm sipping on some dynastimum tea or a little pu-erh or some, you know, your coffee, maybe some mushroom infused coffee. just make it a thing. Maybe you go out there and you pop on the Ultimate Health Podcast and you stand there proud. Maybe you take it another step. Maybe you go up on, like I lived in the woods, in Wildwoods in Missouri, and we're kind of secluded. So maybe you even put on your house shoes and some warm socks and you go out there in the nude and you stand there in all your glory.

35:22Shawn Stevenson:I never did that, by the way, but I'm just throwing it out there. So those are a couple of things. And also last thing to add to the mix here, you know, I've spent time in, you know, all over the place, you know, New York city, concrete jungle, some of the, some of the best humans that I know live there. And that's one of those things where even getting sunlight is difficult because of all these top, tall buildings. Right. So in a case like that, we do have advances in technology, you know, like light boxes and things like that, that do have some clinical efficacy, especially against seasonal affective disorder.

35:58Shawn Stevenson:Very, very compelling evidence as to how effective using light boxes are. With that said, we still can't replicate sunlight. And so I would highly suggest structuring your day, structuring your life in a way that you're able to pop out, even if it's for lunchtime. Central Park is obviously at Central. So there's a lot going on there, but just being able to find a place where you got some open access to some more sunlight and or ambient light. If you care about this stuff, you can structure it in your day. There is a way to do it, whether it's like you're doing a walking meeting, whether it's, you know, your lunch break, whether it's, you know, right after work, whatever the case might be.

36:41Shawn Stevenson:But even that, by the way, I think you know about the litigation, the Sunshine Act, where they're trying to make this kind of permanent change with daylight savings time, but in the wrong direction. So that would create a situation where, you know, New York City folks are, you know, kids are going to be at the bus stop and it's like 8 a.m., 8.30 a.m. and the sun still isn't up. Right. So, yeah, we just got to keep all this in context. And by the way, I did a masterclass really talking about the Sunshine Protection Act and kind of giving us the science around that, but also imploring us to like, we have a voice in this stuff.

37:20Shawn Stevenson:We also have a voice most powerfully in our own life. But we tend to tell ourselves like, this is the only way. I can't do it. I can't get it. It's too cold. It's this. It's that. It's my schedule. Where there's a will, there's 10 ,000 ways. And we can live our lives making up excuses, not to say that they're not valid. But every excuse that we make, we're putting ourselves in a little mental prison. There is absolutely a way that you could get some sun exposure in your day. You just have to make it a priority. And coming back to the zoomed out overhead that we started this with, we were talking about setting the circadian rhythm or internal clock.

37:56And when it comes to that specifically, we need to get that sun within a certain period of time when we wake up, correct?

38:03Shawn Stevenson:Ideally, it would be within the first 90 minutes to two hours of the sun rising that you get some sun exposure because some folks get up long before the sun comes up, depending on the time of year. You know, maybe the sun is rising at say, you know, seven and they're getting up at five. So just as soon as, as soon as the sun comes up, if you can just get, you know, get 10 minutes. Some folks advise more. 10 minutes is more than sufficient. Even five minutes, to be honest. I just to tell you this, I think even one minute, even just one minute, the sun our bodies are so intelligent and it knows what that is our genes know what sunlight is and it's just like oh that's and it in every cell in your body knows based on where the sun is at the location of it what time it is as far as your biological clocks are concerned our cells are so smart but our belief systems can be so dumb because we think that our bodies don't have this intelligence that are so far beyond anything that we're acclimated towards.

39:07Shawn Stevenson:So I would rely on leaning into nature, leaning into what our genes have evolved with, and letting that do the work, if that makes sense. No, for sure. And you talked about a few different areas there when it comes to setting that internal clock. One, we just covered deeply being sunlight in the morning. Let's talk about exercise. Is this something we want to do at a certain time of the day, ideally? and how does that relate to our internal clock? So Appalachian State University did a really great study to see how exercise would affect things like our sleep quality and our blood pressure in the evening, for example.

39:46Shawn Stevenson:Having high BP in the evening is more correlated with this kind of activation of our fight or flight sympathetic nervous system, like more hypertension in the evening is something that we don't want. We want a calming down of things. this leads to another common misconception in health that our body's numbers are static, right? So that our temperature, right? 98.6 degrees, right? You're healthy. No, your temperature can easily be over a hundred during the day just because, not because you're sick or anything like that. It's just this constant modulation. If you just did a workout, you might have your temperature higher and that's okay.

40:28Shawn Stevenson:Your blood glucose might be up. Your stress hormones might be elevated. Cortisol, right? That's given this villainous name in science, unfortunately, cortisol is not a bad guy. However, when it's hyperactive and or produced at the wrong time, yes, we can have some problems. But you need cortisol in order to make thyroid hormone, for example. You need cortisol in the mix in order for you to have the energy to just kind of get up and get engaged with life. Cortisol is not bad. You want cortisol, but you want it to be in balance. You want to find that homeostasis. And so, for example, when we're under stress, one of the things that tends to happen, and also this is what leads to, you know, higher likelihood of getting an illness.

41:17Shawn Stevenson:When we're pumping out excessive amounts of cortisol, all, our bodies tend to dump out a lot of vitamin C, right? So these stores kind of reservoir, vitamin C, B vitamins, in particular B5. And those are needed for all kinds of immune modulation, but they're also needed for so many other, vitamin C is part of like even your skin being able to regenerate itself, right? It's important for many things, but we just start like dumping out so much of it. And so this kind of RDA paradigm of like, we get this certain amount of vitamin C. No, it's not even based on you as an individual, let alone a healthy person.

41:55Shawn Stevenson:A lot of these things are for preventing deficiency and like scurvy. That's what the numbers are based on. And it's also not based on what is your lifestyle right now. And so, you know, with all that being said, we want to be mindful of that and how exercise affects our endocrine system. And so what the researchers did, again, this was Appalachian State University, they had folks exercise at three different times a day to see what the effects would be. And they had them exercise at 7 a.m. exclusively for one phase of the study. They had them exercise at 1 p.m. right in the afternoon. And then they had them in another phase of study exercise at 7 p.m.

42:31Shawn Stevenson:in the evening. I have a book from my youngest son that I would read him in the evening, and then eventually he started reading it himself. In the book, it's like a bedtime book. The little characters, the little animals had their bedtime routine. You know, this might be, you know, taking a bath, brushing their teeth, putting their pajamas. But then one of the things, and this was an older book, was for them to exercise right before bed, like literally next to their bed to kind of exhaust them. Right. And this was something that was actually promoted in healthcare, not that many years ago. Okay.

43:08Shawn Stevenson:A few decades back, like tire yourself out. and just from a logical perspective today what is that doing we're getting the release of all these stressful amounts that's not what you want to do and so but however for some people that's that's what they do they just beat themselves to a pulp they go to their uh bjj their jujitsu class in the evening at 9 p.m they do their roll-in they're exhausted maybe they even you know do some cardio afterwards just to try to knock themselves out right so now here's what happened after they compiled all the data. The folks who exercise in the morning, the folks who exercise in the morning at 7 a.m.

43:48Shawn Stevenson:had the most efficient sleep cycles. They tended to sleep longer and they spent the most time in the deepest, most anabolic stages of sleep, right? So really getting that restorative high quality sleep. And they had the greatest drop in their blood pressure in the evening. So exercise in the morning helped them to lower their blood pressure in the evening. activation of that parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system. 1 p.m. It was some, you know, there's some improvement. Yes. This is again, none of, even as I'm saying this, I hesitate because your lifestyle, this doesn't mean you can't exercise after work.

44:29Shawn Stevenson:This doesn't mean that. However, what's ideal, what is our, what our genes expect of us? probably the exercise in the early part of the day. In the evening, it was, compared to the other two times, the least benefit as far as a sleep quality, restorative sleep time, whatever. But it didn't make things worse. That's the thing. I want to make that clear. It didn't make things worse. So with that said, if you have a routine where you're working out after work, cool. Absolutely. But get some exercise in in the morning. and they're just like, I already don't have time. That's where I work out at night.

45:07Shawn Stevenson:I'm not saying you got to do a full workout. Just take five minutes. This can be in coordination with getting outside for five minutes. I do this every day, five to 10 minute walk. For years, I'd do five to 10 minutes on a rebounder, right? So, but now I'm in LA and it's not as cold. So I've just gotten this habit of going for this power walk, five, 10 minutes, do a little bit of mobility work. That's how I start my day, right? So, you know, you got to really base it on your lifestyle. Now, I highly encourage people just for that circadian timing benefit for every cell in your body, get some sun exposure.

45:40Shawn Stevenson:And you could couple that with a little bit of exercise at the same time. Let's move into the third piece now, which you talked about before being a big piece of this, which is the food when it comes to setting the internal clock. When do you eat? And what is the research showing in that realm? Awesome. Awesome. All right. I'm going to share a piece of research first. So this was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Obesity. All right. And the researchers stated that employing intermittent fasting is like flipping a, quote, metabolic switch that shifts the metabolism from fat creation and fat storage to mobilization of body fat in the form of free fatty acids and fatty acid-derived ketones to be used for fuel.

46:23Shawn Stevenson:Now, that sounds great, right? Utilizing stored body fat. But one of the things that I always try to add in in that conversation, lipolysis is one part of it. Getting these free fatty acids to get released, that's cool. But they get reabsorbed. Like 75 % that gets released gets reabsorbed somewhere else. All right? And what we want to do, the end point of where it was, quote, burning fat, where we're actually eliminating from our system, is at the mitochondria. So it's getting them to that factory. And we have beta oxidation, cellular respiration, the elimination of this fat, where we, quote, lose fat.

47:02Shawn Stevenson:And that process in and of itself, again, it's cool, but what really drives this process to completion is what's really helpful. Let me not say this is not operating in isolation, is not losing our muscle tissue. Muscle is such a powerful component because it's so expensive for our bodies to carry. The mitochondria are so hungry for those free fatty acids will easily get utilized by our muscle tissue. And another study, this was conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, found that intermittent fasting is able to quickly reduce insulin resistance and nullify the effects of insulin-created roadblocks that stop fat from being released from our cells.

47:45Shawn Stevenson:but here's also what they found. And this was published in the journal Achronology that it also is very protective of our muscle tissue, this process versus a conventional calorie restriction diet. All right. There's something, there's some intelligence with our body when you have a short bout of not having food, where it's protective of our muscle and releasing these stored fatty acids. Because in the short term, through our evolution, I would think that this is like, okay, this individual is getting up, it's time to hunt. We want to make sure the muscles are robust. We got this fat for fuel.

48:19Shawn Stevenson:However, over time, when we don't have food, when we're fasting, we'll just say, you know, this is extending out seven days, whatever. Now evolution has a different switch because that muscle is expensive. And so we will start using that tissue and holding on. Fat is, it's much, it's a much slower burn. so it can live off of this much longer. So there's a shift that takes place over time, right? This is why intermittent fasting, smart intermittent fasting can be so valuable because we're tapping into the good stuff that we want without dipping into, you know, it's a long-term calorie restriction, right?

48:58Shawn Stevenson:And or long periods of fasting without an objective of like, for example, healing from a chronic disease, there is a place for that. Absolutely. And so with that said, man, I've been intermittent fasting for, I'd say eight years. And again, I just kind of, prior to that for about 15, 16, wait a minute, 17 years, actually, I've been employing various types of fasting because of my mother-in-law and, you know, kind of trying to figure again, figure out various health issues. And so I'm a big proponent of not talking about something that I don't have intimate experience with. And so suddenly I'm seeing people come coming into my office that have, you know, fibroids and have, you know, Crohn's and have, you know, fill in the blank, glaucoma, cancer.

49:55Shawn Stevenson:And it's just like, I didn't necessarily sign up to start seeing all this variety of chronic issues and seeing uh this scare happen with my my wife at the time she was my girlfriend but she went in routine checkup and they found some cancerous cells you know the ovarian variety and it shocked her you know she was young we're in college like what the what is how and she went to her mother which her her mom is an occupational therapist but she's been a teacher trainer for many years she goes above and beyond for her patients teaching them nutrition, all this stuff. And I would see physicians coming in to see my mother-in-law to try to get their health together.

50:34Shawn Stevenson:And I'm just like, what? Why are they listening to your mom? Like, it's so weird. And so, you know, so she went to her mother and told her, you know, I got this diagnosis. And my wife was my girlfriend at the time. She was really broken up, like cancer, right? It's just like, it's so scary. And she told me about it first. And I remember I was leaving my, I was leaving the library at the university. I'm just like, I'm frozen. I'm like, I don't know what to do. Talk to your mom. And so anyways, this is a true story. This is what really got me into this field at this level. Her mom put her onto this protocol of fasting.

51:13Shawn Stevenson:It was 21 days, structured fast. She was juicing vegetables and all these other things and these different combination of herbs and all this stuff this seems so strange to me. And about 25 days later, she went into the physician and they couldn't find anything. And this is a true story. This happened in my life. I wouldn't give a shit. I wouldn't care. I wouldn't believe this if I didn't see it happen myself. But in that moment, she still gave her power away because they were like, well, we can't find anything with this testing method. Let's do something more invasive, right? And so now they're cutting, they're doing all, they're trying to find a problem.

51:57Shawn Stevenson:Instead of asking, what did you do? What happened where we can't find anything? And so with that being said, now I know like, wow, there's, I knew from my experience that a degenerative bone condition or spinal condition can resolve itself because that's what happened with me at the age of 22, right? Getting diagnosed at 20. But I didn't know like cancer, diabetes, like what? There's solutions for these things. Your body has a capacity to resolve these issues as well. And so it opened a whole new paradigm to me. So I started to, um, in good consciousness, I couldn't talk about this without doing it.

52:39Shawn Stevenson:So So we did 21 day fast and like, and I would do that for years, not 21 days, but maybe like a seven to 10 days and like having our little coconut water and water fast. And there's a lot, there's a lot of experimentation, wonderful revelations and that whole thing. So I was very versed at this when intermittent fasting came into the fold because the downside with those fasting protocols is, you know, with lifting weights and training and my muscle retention, I mean, I would get so skinny. I would lose weight and then I have to kind of build from the ground up. And so that was kind of frustrating.

53:14Shawn Stevenson:And so I wanted to be able to extract those benefits, however. And so just more on a consistent, regular basis, the intermittent fast. And so my protocol today, just to share with you, even today, I'll just give you the example. I got up at, we'll say 6 a.m. I made my son's lunch and made, well, my wife made her own coffee today for a change. And I did some reading and some mobility work. And I had coffee at probably, and it was a cordyceps infused organic coffee. And I probably had that at say eight o 'clock, 8 a.m. So maybe that was like two hours after getting up. And I had some MCT oil in there.

54:04Shawn Stevenson:I had, uh, let's see some collagen in there, which I don't always do. And, uh, yeah, so I had that. And then I did a workout at say nine o 'clock. It was like 45 minutes. And then I, then I had a 15 minute cushion for us, you know, so I was like trying to get all the tech stuff together. And so, but while, while we started this interview, I just had some, you know, protein, I just had protein and water. And so I'll probably have my first quote meal at, you know, noon, noonish my time. All right. I'm about to give you the tea on longevity. There's one beverage that has been found and scientifically proven to contribute to longevity far better than anything else.

54:50Shawn Stevenson:A phenomenal peer reviewed study published in the Lancet just last year found that people who regularly drink tea age slower than everyone else. using clinical biomarkers to determine biological age and following thousands of participants for up to four and a half years. The researchers found that number one, transitioning from not drinking tea to tea drinking was associated with a decrease in biological aging versus people who remained non tea drinkers. That's the tea. Number two, even stronger associations were found in consistent tea drinkers. And number three, the research suggests that drinking around three cups of tea per day had the most anti-aging benefits.

55:32Shawn Stevenson:Now there are so many varieties of teas to choose from and they're teeming with different benefits from green tea to herbal teas like Roe Boys tea. But there's one tea, if we're speaking about anti-aging, that you need to know about. It's been found to have anti-aging and anti-obesity effects. And this is according to a study published in the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging that found that the renowned science-backed tea called Pu-erh makes a notable difference in weight loss in this double blind randomized placebo-controlled trial. The researchers stated, quote, consumption of Pu-erh was associated with statistically significant weight loss when compared to a placebo.

56:10Shawn Stevenson:Fat loss was seen for the arms, legs, and the hip and belly regions, unquote. The participants who utilized as Pu-erh lost more overall body fat. And what was especially remarkable was they maintained their muscle mass during their weight loss. This is that major component of longevity. There's only one Pu-erh that I drink, and this is my favorite tea. I've been drinking Pu-erh for years, and it's from the incredible team at Peak Life. Go to peaklife.com forward slash model. Right now, you're gonna receive up to 20 % off, plus some limited time-free bonuses, like an electric frother to mix your favorite beverages.

56:49Shawn Stevenson:Their Puerh is made from a patented cold extraction technology. It's triple toxin screened for purity and it's wild harvested. So it's even richer in these incredible polyphenols that lead to those amazing benefits that we talked about. And right now you get to try PTs risk-free with their 30-day money-back guarantee. You either love it or you'll receive a full refund. So you have nothing to lose and better health to gain. Head over there, check them out. It's peaklife.com forward slash model. That's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E.com forward slash model. Take advantage. That is the T. Now back to the show.

57:29Interesting. Thanks for sharing all that. And I want to get into a couple of details you shared. One being waiting two hours to have your coffee. That's not a typical type thing most people do. I'm somebody that, you know, I go to the washroom and I make sure my daughter's, you know, has her little breakfast and do a couple things around the house, feed the dog and then have my coffee. Why wait that couple of hours?

57:52Shawn Stevenson:I'm so glad that you asked this. My wife literally just asked me about this and I'm like, it just, it's in my book, baby. I talk about it because there's, there's conflicting ideas because she was asking, does having this coffee break my fast? and i'm like on paper on paper yes because you're consuming something that is a caloric consumption as well you know you might have your ghee or grass-fed butter or you know mct oil collagen whatever the case might be however i don't know if you know ori hoffmeckler no i don't so he wrote the warrior diet many many years ago he's been talking he was like israeli special forces.

58:33Shawn Stevenson:He's got one of the coolest voices. And he's been talking about this stuff for so long. And he's a picture of this, right? Andrew Huberman, big fan of his, of Ori Hoffmechler. We actually ended up talking about him when we were talking. Andrew actually went to Ori's place one time, you know, back in the day, like seeking counsel from the Yoda in a sense of this. And Ori really brought to the fold this concept of something called fasting mimicking nutrients, right? So fasting mimicking nutrients. He even shared data with me on something like a whey protein being something that doesn't break your fast as far as your metabolism is concerned.

59:14Shawn Stevenson:It actually nudges it into more of those metabolic actions that would happen while you're fasting. But in particular, also MCT oil, you know, same thing here. And so, and I want to share this by by the way, because that consolidation of time, I think people can be dogmatic about, like it needs to be a certain, you know, 16-8 or 12-4, like what's the best? This was published in the journal Cell Metabolism. And they were looking at the habits, first of all, of the average adult American. And they found that the average person from the first bite of food in the morning to the last thing they have in the evening, they eat about 15 hours span a day, all right?

59:54Shawn Stevenson:which is nearly the amount of time most people are awake okay and the scientists decided to see what would happen if they simply shortened their eating window just a little bit for the test subjects to see what happened and they just had them reduce their eating window to 10 to 12 hours 10 to 12 hours all right so this is just 12 like this would be 12 12 and here's what happened after 16 weeks without any standard dietary restrictions by the way they didn't tell them anything, just eat your food in this window. By shortening their eating window, the study participants lost an average of over seven pounds.

1:00:28Shawn Stevenson:All right. They subjectively reported that they were sleeping better. They had more energy and also an analysis of their diet found that they naturally reduced their caloric intake by about 20%. So they were losing weight. And this was without calorie restriction again, by the way, they were losing weight, eating foods that they enjoyed and experiencing a lot more energy. But again, there's a lot more going behind the scenes with metabolism. So even just having intentional, right? I'm done eating dinner at say 7 p.m. I have my coffee at 7 a.m. the next day, right? If you're concerned about on paper.

1:01:04Shawn Stevenson:However, we have this paradigm of fasting mimicking nutrients, and I can share a specific on this. All right, not to specifically highlight how coffee can fit into this equation of a fasting mimicking nutrient source. Here's a study. This was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition revealed that coffee actually stimulates the release of a variety of satiety hormones, including CCK. Now, this is produced primarily by cells that are in our gut, and CCK has this really prolific impact on our overall metabolism. And so another one of the people know a lot about leptin right now is kind of being the glorified captain of the satiety hormone team.

1:01:46Shawn Stevenson:But there's also CCK. There's also adiponectin, which adiponectin has this really interesting ability to specifically target visceral fat. And as far as like releasing energy as well. So our satiety hormones don't just play a role in making us feel satiated. They play a role in fat metabolism. And so another aspect with coffee was that, now this is where it gets really interesting. The chlorogenic acid found in coffee has been found to increase the breakdown of stored white adipose tissue while increasing the protection of our muscle tissue. That is like a perfect complement to what fasting does.

1:02:27Shawn Stevenson:That's exactly what we want in an intermittent fast. Again, protection of our muscle tissue to also sustain this fast. And I'll share one more. This is according to data published in the journal Biochemical Pharmacology, found that coffee is able to accomplish this particular feat through the action of AMP-activated protein kinase, or I call it AMP-K. And AMP-K has several influences over our health, in particular improving glucose transport into our cells, regulation of inflammation, autophagy, the list goes on and on and on. So the benefits here with coffee go on and on and on. And also I cited a study and all that I just shared is in Eat Smarter.

1:03:08Shawn Stevenson:But earlier in the book, I cited a study where researchers were looking at what happens when you drink coffee as far as your brown adipose tissue influence. And so they were like using MRIs or fMRIs. And they found that brown adipose tissue dominant places in the body, you know, like around the neck, shoulders, around the sternum would light up when people consume coffee. All right. So there's something really remarkable about this. And humans, we've been utilizing coffee for thousands of years. However, what can happen again in a dogmatic framework is that, oh, this is killing people. This is a bad thing.

1:03:45Shawn Stevenson:This is, you know, whatever. And there are negatives as well. Just about every single thing, every food, every nutrient source, no matter how healthy it is, there's a point where we're going to have data that shows the opposite of what you might consider. And that's, again, for us to open ourselves up because coffee might be wonderful, even in all these contexts I'm sharing, but maybe not for you, not right now. You know, maybe you've got some issues with how your body's processing, you know, a nervous system stimulant. Right. And so this is one of those things where we also see potential for influencing our sleep quality in a negative way based on your caffeine metabolism.

1:04:25Caffeine has a half-life of, depending on you, it could be five-hour half-life, it could be eight-hour half-life.

1:04:33Shawn Stevenson:So if you consume 400 milligrams of caffeine, after five hours, half of that 200 milligrams could be active in your system. That's definitely enough to screw up your sleep cycles. And there was a really interesting study done. And they gave test participants caffeine literally right before they went to bed, three hours before bed, six hours before bed. Even having caffeine six hours before bed created noticeable disruption to their sleep cycles. All right. But they were using caffeine isolated. This isn't coffee. All right. Because coffee is also coming along with all these other cofactors that, you know.

1:05:10Shawn Stevenson:And also we can do things to complement coffee. Like, this is why I love the infusion aspect with the medicinal mushrooms, for example, or even L-theanine adding to the mix. This is why green tea doesn't tend to give people any negative responses that they might see with having too much caffeine from coffee. Because that L-theanine is more calmative, helping to kind of keep you balanced. And so, you know, just being able to also buffer things with some high quality fats as well. You know, there's so many different ways that you can go about this, but I just wanted to point this out. Now, I want to share one more nutrient really quickly, because I mentioned the MCT oil implement in this.

1:05:49Shawn Stevenson:And so in the context of complementing a fast or being a fasting mimicking protocol. So MCT is one of the things that's remarkable about this, you know, medium chain triglycerides is that it instantly incites the production of ketones. So we don't have to be in a state where, you know, we're fasting for a certain amount of time, whatever the case might be, that generally we can get the activity of ketones. MCTs trigger this response. And MCTs, as a lot of folks know at this point, can be utilized, I struggle to say an alternative fuel source, but because it's not necessarily an alternative fuel source.

1:06:30Shawn Stevenson:It's also, it's both. Our brains can use ketones and it can use glucose. Not for everything in the brain, however. Glucose kind of trumps as far as all the stuff that it can do in a sense. But it's not like ketones have not been utilized by humans forever. All right? It's something that just was a natural, normal part of our evolution. And so that's one thing. And also here in this context, consuming MCTs during your fasting window mimics and supports the benefits of fasting in this particular way, which is boosting the level of ketones, because that's one of the things we see with fasting. Plus, according to data cited in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders, MCTs have been found to boost the oxidation of stored fat while increasing satiety at the same time.

1:07:24Shawn Stevenson:The study also noted that MCT enables study participants to retain more of their muscle mass during the weight loss process. Come on! As a kid, it's such a wonderful compliment. Let me make sure, I want to highlight what you just said there, because you mentioned before coffee in and of itself is going to help burn the white fat and preserve muscle. And now you're saying MCT is going to, if we put that in the coffee, it's going to ramp that up as well. which brings me to the question again knowing that how come you'd wait a couple hours to have that coffee and not get that going earlier in your body here's the answer i don't always wait that long all right i don't always wait that long um if i do it's just because i'm doing other stuff right so i might just be it's because i'm reading or meditating or i'm just getting that work you know that that 10 minute walk in and mobility work i'm gonna get to that coffee you know and And so, however, again, because on paper, it's just like sometimes just to challenge myself or just to, you know, fill this with something else.

1:08:28Shawn Stevenson:I have that space. My wife likes to get right to the coffee. As a matter of fact, she is a little aggressive about me getting her coffee together for her because that's kind of like her morning vibe. She likes to sit and have her coffee and listen to her voice text from her friend or do her journal. it's a vibe you know it's a vibe it's like a it's a celebratory aspect of the day you know so i totally get it and for me it just it just depends so you could take on whatever mental perspective you want on paper you are having something with with calories if you put something in the coffee just straight black coffee not even in the conversation about is that breaking fast not not even on paper no kind of way is that doing that so coffee and tea and obviously water totally fair game here to just be completely fast on all checking all the boxes.

1:09:21Shawn Stevenson:However, if you're adding things to the coffee on paper, breaking the fast. However, if you implement fasting mimicking nutrients, like what we're talking about here, and I'm just mentioning a couple like with MCTs, you're going to possibly up-level the benefits of that fast. So it just depends on your perspective at the end of the day. And another one of those nutrients you mentioned before is whey protein being a fasting mimicking food. Is that what's in that bottle you're sipping from after the workout? Yes, that was. Yes. So I had some grass-fed whey. And even that, every single thing that we can talk about, it's going to have some kind of controversy around it.

1:10:04Shawn Stevenson:Whereas whey, I believe that a point, again, it's just like a waste product or a byproduct of a different industry, right? But then I started to look at like, where did this actually come from? Where was the origin? When did humans first documented, start utilizing whey? And it goes back to Hippocrates. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, largely he gets this label. He utilized whey protein for his patients. all right he called it serum all right serum and he really felt there was this kind of rejuvenating elixir that was used internally and even having people bathe in it all right now what kind of money you have today to have to you know to be able to bathe in whey protein some grass-fed whey Hippocrates is balling out or they had a system to where he was getting access to a level of this medicine really that he that he was utilizing but not in the same thing since that we do we think about it here where something that is like a spot thing we're talking about more something something that is more of a of a something that is a tonifier or adaptogen or something that adds benefit and so yeah so looking into that i was just realizing like wait a minute i have a skewed perspective on this.

1:11:29Shawn Stevenson:And although we have all of these wonderful plant-based proteins as well, in our data, in peer-reviewed, in our most prestigious peer-reviewed journals, we don't have very much data affirming the efficacy. Even though we might know that the protein amino acid profile is there, we just haven't tested it yet. Not to say that it's not effective, we just have so much peer-reviewed data on the efficacy of whey protein and having benefits with sustaining our muscle tissue, helping to reduce the rates of muscle breakdown, which Gabrielle Lyon, which I sent you an email on this as well right before the show, but she's really pioneering muscle-centric medicine because she's worked as a geriatric physician and seeing what happens when we don't work on building and sustaining our muscle.

1:12:19Shawn Stevenson:our muscle is even acts in many ways is like a reservoir for anti-aging compounds or even again there's certain terms that I'm using today just because they're popular we're going to age but sustaining youthfulness is a better way to look at it and if you don't have that reserve this is why people who are fit who have a notable amount of muscle on their frame. They even recover faster from infectious diseases, from injuries, and the like. And that becomes more important as you get older. You know, we have immunosenescence taking hold. We have the higher likelihood of having an injury. The fitter you are, the faster you're going to bounce back.

1:13:07And Sean, what are your thoughts on after a workout, and maybe this is something you do periodically, continuing a fast instead of having a drink like that. So could you compare and contrast the difference in physiology to continue a fast versus put that protein in right after?

1:13:25Shawn Stevenson:I love this question. All right. This is something I've sat and contemplated on, of course, looking at the data. One of the things that we see when you engage your muscles, right? You do some strength training activity, and then you have more of a fasting time after, we see a higher release of human growth hormone, right? So we're getting a higher release of HGH, which again, if we're looking through the lens of youthfulness, that's a pretty nice benefit. But this is coupled with you still getting in your required protein intake at some point, right so one of the things that i really she kept reiterating this in our conversation because i'm just like like what about protein at this time what about this time she's just like as long as you have your proteins need protein needs met in a day your body knows how to categorize and sort things out and to use it appropriately right so as long as you're hitting your mark to help to regenerate to rebuild because we have this thing in our mind me coming from the fitness world as well, when I was in college, I was a strength conditioning coach and personal trainer first when I was working on my degree.

1:14:37Shawn Stevenson:And so I was really force fed these narratives. Like, you know, you have this like anabolic window, right. Or your muscle is just like you, if you don't eat, like within this timeframe, then, you know, you're, you're, you're going catabolic. If you don't eat breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you don't eat it, your metabolism isn't on. These things are just not logical. They're not logical. If your metabolism is on, you're not waking up. That's the end of the story. But of course, there is a place where, especially with the intake of protein in particular, we're seeing this increase in our metabolic rate, in a sense, to try to process that protein.

1:15:21Shawn Stevenson:It is more metabolically demanding. But does that mean that you're going to have more energy or you're going to have more whatever, fill in the blank? it's just looking at things through this like very through tunnel vision and so with that said the data is clear on something else though post-workout protein synthesis the utilization of that protein post-workout when your muscles have experienced these micro tears it is much higher in its capacity to absorb and use those proteins and specifically glucose, utilizing carbohydrates. This is a great time if you want to get in a nice whack of carbohydrates, your muscles become like sponges after that workout to where the implications of that carbohydrate dose that you take in, getting stored as fat somehow is like almost eliminated.

1:16:33And maybe if you're going to IHOP and you're having like, you know, the fruity, tutti,

1:16:38Shawn Stevenson:fresh and fruity, or maybe that's Denny's, but you're having this whole crazy breakfast with like stacks and stacks of pancakes, maybe you might store some fat. But for the most part, you know, a reasonable amount of carbohydrates and, you know, maybe a treat or something like that your muscles are just hungry and sopping all that up. All right. So there's two different perspectives here. Myself personally, it just depends. Like today I knew the format of my day. This is a time I'm going to take advantage. I'm not going to have something that's super calorie dense and have a whack of like 20 grams of protein and call it a day, you know, and then I'll have my meal and carbohydrate intake and all that stuff a little bit later.

1:17:22Shawn Stevenson:And so, yeah, it just really depends on what your goal is. But the bottom line is you absolutely need to get in your protein requirement during the day. And we've been fed a lot of misinformation over the years about protein in particular. And that's something I really, I didn't know that I was doing it at the time. This was before I even knew Gabrielle. But in Eat Smarter, I was really helping to bring about, I spent a significant amount of time helping to articulate how important and how valuable protein is. Because when you're looking at me, when I'm seeing you, when you see a person, you're looking at their proteins.

1:18:00Shawn Stevenson:Primarily, you're looking at proteins are kind of the dry weight of the human body. It's the solid stuff, protein and minerals. And they're so important for building blocks for everything. If we get into a conversation about hormones, your hormones are made from proteins, enzymes. They're proteins. If you're not giving your body these basic building blocks, it's going to struggle. But the human body is resilient. It'll figure it out. It could do a patchwork job on you. But it will struggle to just do basic functions, not to mention more advanced things. This is one of the reasons that I had such degradation when I was just still a kid, really.

1:18:39Shawn Stevenson:When I had this diagnosis of degenerative disc disease at the age of 20, that was years in the making to get to that place where my disc looked like two dark fried pieces of bologna. My L4, L5 disc, and the light isn't shining through them. That took years to get to that place. So how can a child have that much degradation? By the way, my last scan, the light is shining through. You could see the disc. It has health. And this is two decades later. And it's just like, I was so deficient in the building blocks necessary to make high quality tissues. This is why protein is so important. It's not a joke.

1:19:22Shawn Stevenson:you know when i was you know again i'm inclusive all i know the top people they're my friends in the vegan camp in carnivore camp talk about a spectrum of you know associations but we need to be more inclusive we're we're fighting about minutiae a lot of times the average american 60 of the average american's diet is ultra processed foods and we're debating about a toxin in a plant. Oh my God. And by the way, when I say that statistic, a lot of people are not aware that that's for American adults. According to the CDC, children here in the United States, approximately 67 % of their diet is ultra processed foods, ultra processed foods.

1:20:09Shawn Stevenson:That means it is so far removed from anything that's natural. You can't even tell where it came from. You can't tell where lucky charms came from. That's an ultra processed food. A spaghetti-o? Where does that come from? If you present this to somebody in a tribe, the Maasai, for example, like here's a spaghetti. What plant, where did this come from? There's no association. It's lost any resemblance to anything that's real or natural. that makes up 67 % of our children's diet here in the United States. It's absurd. And so, you know, with that said, being more inclusive and getting everybody together, you know, instead of all this infighting, I think we could do a lot of good, you know, but having that perspective, you know, with, and also understanding that this can change as well.

1:21:07Shawn Stevenson:You know, one of my friends, Paul Saladino, first he was like, you know, all plans, get him out of here. Now he's integrated the fruit. you know, but he still has this very, you know, animal centric protocol that works for him. Right. And I love and admire him because he has the audacity to change his perspective. And also he's about their life with presenting evidence to support his views. But then we've got a vegan doc who has the capacity to do the same thing. Right. And so we have to understand that both of them are right and both of them are wrong, you know, because it depends on you. And there are templates, like, especially with what Paul's doing.

1:21:50Shawn Stevenson:What if humans been doing the longest? We've been hunter gatherers forever, forever. A vegan lifestyle is a new invention in human society. It's a new thing. And that's okay. Not to say that there can't be efficacy there but we've got to understand this is a new thing this is an experiment and culture you cannot find one culture throughout human history and you i've read the books i'm talking rare if you've seen some of these like this looks like from from harry potter like some dusty like big you know the gospel of the essenes and all this stuff i know i know we still try to find the thing that supports our view.

1:22:37Shawn Stevenson:We haven't had a truly vegan civilization documented. This is a new thing. Because each culture, for example, we might have the blue zones, for example. There are people who prop that up as plant-based. He's a plant-based. We go, no. It might be 10 % animal products in this particular culture, but don't ignore that it's there. Don't ignore that it's there, it's okay. This doesn't mean that the person has to be a carnivore, but just acknowledge like, Hey, maybe some omega-3s from this source is ideal because today we can use our modern technology to affirm what our ancestors already knew. Like for example, uh, another study that I talked about in the cognitive performance section in Eat Smarter was one of my really good friends, Dr.

1:23:25Shawn Stevenson:Daniel Amen. He actually wrote the cover quote from my book. He's doing spec scans. He's doing brain imaging, looking at the brain to see how nutrition affects the brain. All right. So somebody knows he knows. But anyway, so doing fMRIs and actually looking at the brain, research has uncovered that people who have the lowest intake of DHA in particular have the highest rate of brain shrinkage. That is terrible. That's terrible. It's something that doesn't have to happen. And the implementation of DHA and EPA specifically that are only, not only, primarily going to be coming from animal foods, helps to improve reaction time, just overall cognitive ability, memory, the list goes on and on and on.

1:24:10Shawn Stevenson:Now, I put that parameter mostly animal foods because your body can make some out of precursors. So ALA, which is a plant version of omega-3s, which I spent time in my clinical practice, people were coming in when I was just, I had tunnel vision with a vegan protocol. And I was telling people, you know, you got to get your flaxseed oil, hemp seeds, you know, your chia seeds, all these get your omega-3s are so important. I can see the data on how important omega-3s are, but I'm ignoring that this is DHA and EPA that the studies are saying. So your body can take ALA and convert it into some of DHA and EPA, but depending on you, your microbiome, your genetics, you could lose upwards of 75, 85, 90 % in this conversion process.

1:24:54Shawn Stevenson:And so for you to get the amount of DHA that you need to protect your brain from literally degradation because DHA and EPA are needed for essentially signal transduction, like your cells being able to talk to each other. They're structural fats. They're not used as energy in the same way that other dietary fats are used. They're used to literally make the structure of your brain. This is not a joke. It's so important. And so deficiency in these things is not okay. And so what are the best sources? And talking with, again, folks like Daniel Amen, neuroscientist out of NYU, Lisa Moscone, another friend.

1:25:39Shawn Stevenson:She told me that it's not the fish, it's fish eggs that are the most dense source of DHA and EPA that you're going to find in nature. So salmon roe, caviar, things that just seem very fancy to me. I was like, oh, this is why it's so prized by our ancestors for thousands of years. They figured this out. Also, eggs kept coming up in that category of really viable source, not just of omega-3s, but also of phospholipids. because if we're talking about the brains that actually, I'm sorry, the fats that actually make up the structure of the human brain, the structural fats, sphingolipids, phospholipids, and cholesterol.

1:26:20Shawn Stevenson:These are the fats that actually make up your brain. And this is not a joke. So finding biological sources. Also, obviously fish, fatty fish. The Journal of Neurology found that just one seafood meal per week, folks who are eating just one to two seafood meals per week did in fact perform significantly better on cognitive skills tests than people who ate less than that. All right. We know that it's got the good stuff there. Grass-fed beef. Also, you can get some omega-3s, some viable omega-3s there. But again, if somebody's doing a vegan or vegetarian protocol, I've been working my ass off the last few years to, hey, we've got to get you on the algae oil at least.

1:26:59All right.

1:27:00Shawn Stevenson:So we know, but again, we get in this conversation where we know that the omega-3 DHA is there, but we haven't run a clinical trial. to see the assimilation. Does it perform as well as a fish oil? Supplement does, and we've got all this data on. But then fish oil, we've got this controversy with fish oil. Every single thing is going to have somebody poking holes in it, and that's good. But never, we do not want to get into a situation where we're dogmatic and where we think we've got it all figured out and our way is the only way. Well, given the importance of, you mentioned DHA, EPA, and these other components of our brain, and you mentioned a number of foods there we can have that are high in these nutrients.

1:27:43Talk about the controversy in fish oil. And then do you get all the important fats and nutrients for your brain through food? Or do you feel like you need to supplement to get all that?

1:27:57Shawn Stevenson:I'm a big proponent of food first. I'm a big proponent of food first. This is again, not to say that my way is the only way, because within the food first paradigm, there are some issues because our food is not the same as our ancestors. People have been talking for many years about the degradation of the soil, reduction of nutrients coming through in our food, you know, like, and comparative studies that might come out, like a carrot today versus a carrot 20 years ago. And then the expert might be like, well, just eat two carrots then. You know? And just like, at some point, three carrots might be too much.

1:28:37Shawn Stevenson:It reminds me of Ace Ventura. I don't know if you remember, he kept getting hit by those darts. And one dart, he kept running. Another dart, he's like, three darts is too much. At some point, it's going to be too much. And we need to go to food-based supplements, right? Food-based concentrates of supplements. Essentially, that's what fish oil is. really. And if it's done in an efficacious way, it is also done in a way that is protective of the oil, right? If the company is doing it the right way. Now, I think that probably the biggest controversy around it is probably sustainability. And rightfully so.

1:29:22Shawn Stevenson:Like there's definitely some concerns here. um but it's not because we don't have an abundance or had an abundance it's because we're we're it's not the even the overfishing paradigm it's what we're doing to the environment and for we've lost like 70 of the animal species on planet earth in like the last what 50 to 100 years like so it's some some crazy statistic like that it's nuts like we just keep endangered species and then like extinction like we're just doing this every day and without bounds like nobody's thinking about this like they're just they're too busy you know watching netflix and the mcdonald's drive-thru all right i don't know if anybody's ever did that but that's just what popped out of my my my consciousness because i know it's happening and so people aren't really thinking about this stuff and their advocacy folks in advocacy for all these things.

1:30:23Shawn Stevenson:But I think part of the problem is these people think that their thing is the only thing. And so they get tunnel vision with what's happening here. The only reason we can do something like that, pursue so much destruction, is that we're destroying ourselves. We're not healthy. People that are trying to protect the environment negate the fact that other humans are part of the environment. We're environment too. And if we're unwell, if we're mentally unwell, physically unwell, it's very difficult to make healthful decisions or to give a shit about some rare fish group that is on the endangered species list.

1:30:59Shawn Stevenson:It's very difficult to care about, you know, cuttlefish if, you know, if you're not healthy, like you're trying to just like survive. Because humans as well, we have the capacity to help to reverse so much of this. Like we could do it so quickly. If you saw what happened in LA when everything shut down and like this, I could see, I could see mountains behind mountains behind mountains off in the distance. Just like, I didn't know that that was there because the skies just cleared up, right? Wild animals, true story, start coming into our neighborhood, you know? And life finds a way when it has the opportunity and access.

1:31:42Shawn Stevenson:And this is what's so exciting about regenerative farming. Like, truly, I highly encourage everybody to check out the film Sacred Cow, if you haven't seen it. And to see, like, this particular, he's not even a farmer, but he's more of a scientist. And he took on this challenge, like, how quickly can, using some of these strategies, he essentially turned, like, a desert into viable farmland by utilizing regenerative farming practices. and cows and circulation in a certain way and turn what seemed to be this thing that would take hundreds of years to create viable land to grow food on in like a couple of years is crazy.

1:32:27And so, you know, even with that argument, also there's concerns with, you know, toxicity,

1:32:33Shawn Stevenson:which again, that's viable, very viable. So for me, I'm, I have this bias where I'm looking for, I think that I'm more so doing the thing that science, conventional medicine says that they're doing. We're looking for benefits outweighing the potential downside, right? I'm really doing that, but I'm doing it from a place of like, let's get significant benefit. And if there's a downside, actually small downside, not like they're very close to each other. It's just like, oh, this is just a little bit better. So with that being said, DHA and EPA are so freaking important that that, for me, we're talking about brain shrinkage.

1:33:18Shawn Stevenson:We're talking about cognitive performance. We're talking about what makes you human, your brain. Your brain is what makes you human, truly. And so with that, and if we have a small level of toxicity, so be it. Let's create resilience. Let's create healthy cellular communities so that we can process toxicants in a healthful manner because that's what our bodies do. Now, we have never been exposed to this level of toxicity, let's be clear. But this is what we have to do. We have to arise to the occasion. We have to stack conditions in our favor because we don't want to be so pristine and healthy in our ways about things that if you get like a gram of gluten in your, you know, in your potato somehow, and then you have a full on breakdown, you know, where you, you know, go into a shock.

1:34:17Shawn Stevenson:Like we don't want to be that. We want to be resilient. We want to have the capacity to deal with our exposures. we live in a very abnormal planet. Like we live, I mean, not planet, society. There's a wonderful quote from Krishnamurti that says, it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. And that's what we're seeing right now. There's a confirmation where in our society today, being unhealthy is normalized. And so being adjusted to that, to a profoundly sick society, that is no that is not something that we need to strive for in fact today if you're healthy you're weird you're not normal and so right now we need to strive to be a little bit more weird you know i'm i'm advocating for for for folks to be to be different to be abnormal until we can shift the culture to making health normalized again and i know that that's going to happen because in our society today, where we're seeing the highest rates of epidemic, you know, epidemic levels of disease, every chronic disease you can name, infectious disease, the list goes on and on.

1:35:27Shawn Stevenson:There can't be a problem without a solution. And so even as this is happening with our kind of demented view of human health and we've been dissecting ourselves and we've gotten to a place where we are at war against our own cells, against what makes up our tissues, against the microbes that inhabit our bodies. As we've done that, and we've looked through the lens of conventional medicine and our treatments, quote, treatments for illness, poisoning, cutting, and radioactive treatments, you know, radiation burning, being the tool belt. None of those things speak to health. In spot cases, of course, these things can be viable.

1:36:12Shawn Stevenson:But right now we're shifting to, with that being said, and this is the point I want to make is going to a conventional university, we're force fed these beliefs that it is in our best interest to treat these symptoms. When a patient manifests symptoms, you do something to treat the symptoms. We don't talk about what caused the symptom. We don't talk about root causes. When somebody has hypertension. It's not a sign they're deficient in lisinopril, you know, like that's, but that's the paradigm that we're operating from. But with that, this knowledge in recent decades of healthcare, of medicine, of training physicians has really been kind of reserved for a certain guilt and a certain way of thinking.

1:37:03Shawn Stevenson:While that has taken place and while everything has gotten worse with our society's health, and we have a$4 trillion healthcare system now here in the United States, we've seen the emergence of platforms like this at the same time. Right now, this is emerging where folks can get educated about their own bodies. They can be empowered. They can learn from the very best people in the world in their respective fields of healthcare, of medicine, you know and you and i know many of these folks and we've never seen a time like this so again while things might look bleak on the surface i know there's a there's a tipping point there's a shift that's taking place and we just seen a real kind of like life is all of this has been thrown into a vitamix the last couple of years and really blended up to really see the the mess we've gotten ourselves into and so you know i really see it as a great opportunity of course it's been frustrating of course it's been hard to witness for many people you know the suffering the the the separation the the the sudden dichotomy that's taken place where you're either black or white you're in or out you're this or that and the politicization of science all of these things were already happening, but now it's really been brought to the surface for us to be reminded that we don't want to be adjusted to a severely sick society.

1:38:34Shawn Stevenson:We want to adhere to the principles of life. That's what science really is supposed to be at its core, is the study and understanding of life, of nature, of how things work. And within that, there's this underlying tenet with in science in its truest sense is to continue to question what you think you know sean i want to thank you for coming back on the show it's been a number of years the book i used in prep for this is eat smarter and there's also sleep smarter we're going to link those up we're going to link up all your social media your website the work you're doing is just so important and i thank you for coming on the show and sharing your message and for sharing your message with your platform and all the things you do.

1:39:20So thank you.

1:39:21Shawn Stevenson:It's my honor. I love talking with you. It's been too long. So I'm really grateful to catch up today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, you already know what to do. Share this out with somebody that you care about and keep this conversation going. And definitely, if you feel inspired, check out the Ultimate Health Podcast as well. And listen, we've got some epic, epic world-changing guests and powerful masterclasses coming your way right here on the Model Health Show. So make sure that you are subscribed and ready.

1:39:59Shawn Stevenson:I appreciate you so much. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.

1:40:09Thank you.