The Diet Hacks To Improve Brain Function, Improve Relationships & Live Longer w/ Shawn Stevenson EP 1484

27:29That starts to bleed out to your community. People start to see things different. They see an example. I didn't see any examples when I lived in Ferguson, Missouri. I didn't see what health looked like. And so people to see me and my family, knowing where I come from, it changes everything. Now, how does eating together with friends and family start to shift this culture? Well, according to the data, I'm going to share three powerful studies with you. It's creating a protection for our health that heretofore we didn't really understand. What does that mean? Science. So, eating together with friends and family, and we start with study number one.

28:05This is researchers from Harvard. They gathered all this data on family behaviors around eating. And they found that families that consistently eat together have a higher consumption of vital nutrients that prevent chronic diseases and lower intake of ultra processed foods. Really? Right. So this is Harvard researchers. Why is that? Why do you think that is? There's a couple of reasons why. And I break this down in the book because I'm a why guy. I want to know why. Right, right. And so one of the things that really jumps out is the intention behind eating together as a family. Right. There's an intentional meal planning that's automatically going to take place.

28:42It's not going to be across the board all the time, but if you know I'm having family dinner tonight, you're thinking about it. It's an unconscious, subconscious thought process. It's like, okay, we got to plan what are we going to have. Whereas today, if we don't have this as a constant structure, DoorDash is on tap or just picking up something. Because we're not thinking, but we make the food decision last minute. And that's okay because we have access to that. That's okay. But when that becomes normalized, we get more and more separate from each other. And also this protective mechanism for our health.

29:14So that's study number one. That's from researchers at Harvard. Now this next one was cited in the Journal of Nutrition, Education, and Behavior. And they looked at family behavior around food and the outcomes for the children specifically. And they found that families who eat breakfast with their kids, Parents who eat breakfast with their children four times a week had dramatically lower intake of ultra-processed foods, higher intake of vital nutrients, at least five servings of fruits and vegetables at each day, most days of the week. And the list goes on and on, all these different benefits they were saying.

29:51But this is the most important part about this study. And by the way, they found that when the TV was rarely or never on for these families, they had an even further drop in their consumption of ultra-process foods, the kids specifically, right, because of that marketing, that advertisement. Now, the most important part about the study is that this was looking at minority children who would generally be in the context of low-income conditions, families like mine. We didn't know that eating together could help to protect our health in some strange way. But had we known, even if we were eating processed foods, just the behavior of eating together, it starts to create this protection.

30:31I'm going to share with you why. This leads to the next study. This was a collaboration of studies. This was actually published in Pediatrics and the Journal of the American Medical Association. And I'm going to get all these resources and link them up for you guys too. Yeah, and they're all in the book detail as well in the family cookbook. And so what these researchers uncovered was that, And this is the most important takeaway from today. This is the one. Do this one thing. They found that families who eat together any meal three times a week. Okay. So parents eating together with their children or parent eating together with their children just three times a week dramatically decreased overweight and obesity in the children and decreased eating disorders and just overall decreasing the risk of the onset of early mortality and chronic diseases by eating together with your family three times.

31:26That's fascinating. All right. This is the major takeaway that I want people to take on and make that a mandate, make it a mission to eat with your family, eat with friends three times a week, plan it, add it to your calendar. Because today we've got a lot of stuff going on. And a lot of times if you don't put on your schedule, it's not real. Like literally plan it out. This could be whatever flavor it looks like for you. This could be, you know, family dinner on Wednesday and Thursday and then brunch on Sunday, right? Just whatever works for you. But there's something really special about this process.

31:56And we can unpack more of this why, but also the psychological aspect. And this was shown in data looking at adults and how eating together with their family dramatically decreased their stress levels. This was coming from a population of workers from IBM. And they found that as long as the workers were able to get home and have dinner with their family, it kept work morale high. But as soon as their work schedule and the demand start to dig into them spending time with their family and getting home in time for dinner, their work morale start to go down, their stress levels elevated. Now, why does this matter overall?

32:32Well, and this is another big takeaway from today. and this research as well is published in JAMA. But the research, this was a meta-analysis and the researchers determined that upwards of 80 % of all physician visits today are for stress-related diseases. 80 %? Up to 80 % because of the stress-related component. Because stress isn't just something that's invisible. Your thoughts create correlating chemistry in your body instantaneously. And so if you're having these habitual stressful thoughts and automatic negative thoughts, as our friend Daniel Amen discusses. When this is on automatic for yourself, you're just releasing these chemicals, a chemical cascade that can lean towards toxicity.

33:14They can be great in the short term to help you to survive short-term stress, acute stressors, but we were never designed to carry constant emotional stress, constant mental stress, constant environmental stress. So a lot of people might hear that like, well, I'm not that stress. You know, my work isn't that stressful. We got to talk about this, something called an aleostatic load and your overall stress load. So what goes into your stress load individually? Well, we do have work stress. Yeah. That's a common one. We have relationship stress. Relationship stress can mess you up. Oh man. It can mess you up.

33:51It was messed up for about 15 years in different relationships, man. It was like, it'll mess your health up. Absolutely. Your mind up. Absolutely. Your energy flow, everything. And it's based on your perception. It's based on your perception. That's where you think about it. And the correlating chemistry that you're going to be creating, the most powerful pharmacy in the universe is in your body. A hundred percent. Because this isn't bio-identical. It is identical. You're creating chemistry for your receptor sites, designed in you for you. There's nothing else more powerful than that. And so we've got, of course, there's some great breakup songs out there.

34:26All right. Some great love songs that come from that. There's that. So we've got work stress. We've got relationship stress. We've got mental stress, emotional stress. We've got exercise stress. Exercise stress is what's known as a hermetic stressor. It's a good stress if you're able to heal from it and recover. Because exercise isn't making the magic happen. It's tearing you down. The magic comes when you're able to recover, rebuild, come back better. But add that on to an already stressed person, spiritual stress. what if you feel disconnected what if you feel like you're lacking purpose and significance right all these things it starts to add into that overall stress load and now here's another huge one environmental stress the environment that we are living in today is very very different from what our ancestors evolved in right there are tens of thousands of synthetic newly invented chemicals and we're talking about millions of tons released into our environment.

35:25And so the very air that we're breathing is different. And to take this into one of the cultural contagions that we need to protect our family from within our own household, a really good friend of mine, and she's one of the most brilliant researchers. She's the leading authority in the world on dietary oils. All right. So our name's Dr. Kate Shanahan. She has background as a family physician, but also she's a nutritionist for the Lakers. during Kobe's time there later in his career, helping to extend his career. Every time he would go to a different hotel and travel, he's bringing bone broth or finding a place where they would make it.

36:02Like that was one of his things. Bone broth. That she introduced, yeah. And also Dwight Howard was there too. And she was like, he had the worst diet. He was eating all this candy and whatnot. Some of these guys, you hear about these NBA, NFL guys. It's like just candy half the day. Yeah. And they're just genetic freaks though. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens. Yeah. But the injuries start to come. You start to feel tired. But Colby wasn't like that. Colby was always looking for the edge. It was. Right. And so anyways, so she's got this huge database of research on dietary oils. And one of the research papers that she shared with me, and this blew my mind, like I had to sit with it.

36:36Like I had to really sit and think about it. We're taking muscle biopsies of human fat cells back in the earlier part, like around the 1900s, and to see what makes up a human fat cell. What's in there? and in the biopsy they found that the fat cell itself was made of about two percent PUFAs okay PUFAs are polyunsaturated fatty acids all right they're naturally occurring in different plant foods like nuts and seeds for example and so that's all good now they recently took biopsies of fat cells of modern humans and they found that the average fat cell was made up of about 25 percent PUFAs, polyunsaturated fatty acids.

37:19Now, why does this matter? Polyunsaturated fatty acids are by their very nature, very unstable, right? They're by their very nature, very pro-inflammatory and they are a by-product. Oftentimes, unfortunately, are coming along with things that stir about something called these reactive oxygen species or accelerated oxidation of your cells or accelerated aging to put in bluntly. All right. Now, what does this mean for us? About the span of about a hundred years, 2 % polyunsaturated fatty acids make up our fat cells to now 25%. What does this mean for us? The very ingredients that make up human beings has changed dramatically.

38:05The recipe for making a human is dramatically different. All right. And wondering why we're having such poor health outcomes. Could this be one of the causative agents when we're talking about our switchover in the oils that we're consuming? Where are we getting all these polysaturated fatty acids? Ultra processed foods that are riddled with vegetable oils, canola oils, and all these unstable oils. And by the way, I encourage people, we'll put in the show notes as well, to go to YouTube and look up how canola oil is made. All right. And just watch. Wow. All right. It is going to shock you. If you look at olive oil, right?

38:46Extra virgin olive oil. That means it's cold pressed. And you're pressing olives and you get the oil. That's it. You're just pressing it down and then oil comes out. When you see how canola oil is made, to be able to extract from the canola plant that amount of oil, it is scary. Really? So it's all this chemical processing, all these solvents, deodorizers. And by the way, because it stinks, you know, they're trying to nullify, neutralize the smell. And a lot of even inflammatory, like I'm talking about literally being able to catch on fire type of chemicals used in this process. And to get something that looks uniform and clean.

39:28And then they put it in a plastic bottle. is still on store shelves. And plastics don't just biodegrade, they photodegrade. So light is breaking it down over time, by the way. And there's been a lot of science. I've talked about this on past shows about bisphenol A. What are the, what would you say are the three oils we should try to eliminate from our diet and then three healthier oils that may even have some benefits? Yeah. Let's stay right here with extra virgin olive oil. So one of the studies that I shared in the new book, in the East Mortar Family Cookbook, looks at olive oil and researchers at Auburn determining that olive oil can actually help to reduce inflammation in the brain and help to heal the blood brain barrier.

40:11Incredibly. Like that's, that's astronomically powerful. Like why is this oil, why does it have such a resonance with the human brain and nervous system? That's amazing. And this is more monounsaturated fatty acids, by the way. And also if it's treated right, it's going to be bottled in dark glass because it's sensitive to light and heat. And so even using it, by the way, we want to make sure that we're not using it on too high of heat. And also traditionally, maybe finishing your dishes with it, right? So your plates, your food, or using it for salad dresses, pour on some olive oil, right? Our mutual friend, Dr.

40:46Stephen Gundry, he's an olive oil fanatic. You're obsessed with olive oil. He's like drinking every day. Look at his results. My guy is, you know, he's in his senior years big time, and he's just so on point, like his cognition, his health, his energy last time i talked to him he was like on a ski trip somewhere just it's it's amazing to see it's like a shot a day of olive oil right yeah it's just like a crazy old man or he's like oh no he actually is looking at the data uh-huh and so so that that would be one in the healthy category and another one now this one there's a little bit of by the way none of these are 100 % across the board for everybody.

41:28All right. We've got to keep that in mind. The new, the future of nutrition and health is personalization. For some people, olive oil is not your thing. You might have background genetics that don't metabolize this particular oil a certain way or small amounts or whatever the case might be. So you got to keep that in mind. So we've got nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics are going to be some of the leading fields of signs, looking at how what you eat influences your genetic expression and also your set of genes, how it's catering towards certain things being better for you versus other things, right?

42:03Versus your friend, versus your wife, versus your brother, all right? Everybody has our unique cascade of genes. And on top of that, microbial genes, all right? So all the genes that make up your microbiome, all the bacteria that make up your microbiome, they have their own genes. If we go gene for gene in the human body, 99 % of your genes are bacterial. It's the little critters, their genes. Right. And so now where we're at today with science, we're looking at how our bacteria's genes are affecting our human gene expression. All right, so we can go down the rabbit hole. Sure, sure, sure. But just circle this back to another oil for us to look at would be avocado oil.

42:41Avocado oil is hot out here in the streets. We like it. You'd want that to come in a dark bottle. It's higher in monosaturated fats. and it's coming from a real food, all right? An avocado. It's a lot more close touch than trying to process corn and make it into an oil, all right? So, and that leads over to, and those are just a couple. What about - For the audience watching or listening, I had my first taste of guacamole at your place. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. Actually, this sounds bad, but as a 40-year-old man, I had my first avocado, like hard avocado, about a month ago. Congratulations. You're a big boy.

43:23I still have the palate of like a seven-year-old child. But every time you've been with us, we've introduced something new. I know. And I was like, ah, I'm scared. But did I do it? I'm like, that's not that bad. But it's also - There's also these great food experiences, you know, because you tore that guacamole up, let's be honest. I did. It was good. And also, like the cookies that my wife made back in St. Louis, for example. Like very, again, using high-quality ingredients, but still, like every now and then you want a cookie. I think we had a casserole too. That casserole's amazing. When you come by, we've got some great stuff.

43:52I'm in. Okay, so we got olive oil, avocado oil, all in dark bottles. What would be one more, you think? Is there one more? Man, there's so many. There's so many popping to mind. There's good oils. Yeah, but there's a caveat here. There are this category of seed oils, which that in and of itself, unfortunately, is going to invoke some controversy. and what I want to implore everybody who is really about that life and nutrition, let's come together. Let's have healthier conversations and not become so black or white or dogmatic about a certain thing. So seed oils in general, the majority of these seed oils out here on the streets that are riddled in processed foods, I'm not talking about that.

44:32I'm talking about hemp oil, flaxseed oil, chia oil, that's cold processed, all right, that's stored in shelf-stable ways. It's generally going to be in a refrigerated section. You can find some really valid benefits here that's backed up with peer-reviewed data. All right. So there's a plant form of omega-3s that can be utilized as an energy source by the body pretty efficiently and also can get converted into some of the omega-3s, DHA and EPA to help to fuel your brain and nervous system. Now, your conversion process is going to depend on you. It's going to depend on your genes, your microbiome, your overall metabolic health.

45:11But so I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. But first of all, who is it? And how did you go from? All right. Who's throwing babies out, but with seed oils, just being all bad, all right. Certain seeds, but the important thing is they cannot be exposed to very much heat at all. Are they going to become oxidized and rancid? So those are the ones I would say. And as far as the ones to avoid, absolutely avoid vegetable oil, quote vegetable oil. It's not made from vegetables, by the way. All right. It's the framing because it sounds healthy. You throw, this is called health washing, throwing the label on a thing and making it sound like it's healthy.

45:51And marketers are using this like crazy now, right? So you can get a box of Cheerios. It's like, it's heart healthy, right? Honey nut Cheerios. Lower cholesterol. They actually had to change that. Really? Yeah, because they finally face some backlash. But also now it'll say gluten-free, right? Gluten-free. Oh, you're a gluten-free diet. Or like they're just fat-free, right? They're still throwing these catchphrases onto things with an ultra-processed bowl of crap. But by the way, vegetable oil, I put this study in the book as well. This was published in the journal Inhalation Toxicology. So it's a top journal looking at how inhaling different things, fumes and things like that creates toxicity in the human body and other uh animals as well what the researchers found was that just smelling vegetable oil during cooking can damage your dna holy cow just smelling it now is there any is there any studies i'm sure there are that you're aware of and maybe don't have the data with you right now but are there any studies that talk about if you smoke cigarettes, smoke, weed, smoke, um, what are the other things that people are doing?

47:01Vaping. Vaping. If you're cigarettes, weed, vaping, or inhaling any types of toxic smokes, or if you're drinking alcohol or taking other prescription or non-prescription drugs recreationally, how does that affect your body, your DNA, your metabolism, whether you eat unhealthy ultra processed foods, or if you're eating healthy foods, but doing these other drugs and substances? Is there any data that talks about that? Wow, man, that's a huge question. And that's a huge array of inputs. And so the overarching piece here, number one, is understanding, okay, what have we evolved having exposure to, right?

47:47And the concentrations that we're getting exposed to, because the conversation around something like marijuana, for example, can be very inflammatory. But have humans been consuming some form of that throughout our evolution? And what are people smoking today? And so adding all these pieces together and on top of polypharmacy, which is multiple medications, right now in the United States, about 70 % of our adult citizens are on some form of prescription drug. 70 %? Yeah. Yeah. 70%. Do we know? So it's normal. It's normal to be on medications. Is that America or is that worldwide? It's here in the United States.

48:28We're the most, we love drugs. We love them. Here in the United States, by far, we're the most chronically diseased society in the world and also the biggest consumers of pharmaceuticals. Of course, because we have this mismatch going on. Here in the United States, just last year, we had$4.2 trillion invested into our healthcare system. 4.2 trillion. We can't even fathom. We can't fathom how much money that is. All right? And the next closest country is like, we're four times, it's not even close, like how far away we are on our healthcare investment, but we're not getting better. That's the thing.

49:07What are some of the healthiest countries that take the least amount of - Japan is right. Drugs that have the least amount of obesity. Japan's on the other end of the spectrum with obesity. Really? But also again, there's - They also have high suicide rates too, don't they? Every country has their thing. Right. But also you've got to look at something like that, that might not necessarily be a result of food. We're not just this linear thing. This can be a cultural thing where this perceived stress, the perceived value, the list goes on and on. Pressure in other ways, yeah. But overall, chronic diseases are extremely low compared to us.

49:40Obesity, extremely low compared to us. And this was getting me to my point of what you talked about, all of those different pieces, how does that affect our health outcomes? With polypharmacy, there was a paper, we might have talked about this during the age of the virus that took over our lives. And there was a paper that was published looking at polypharmacy specifically and finding dramatically higher rates of infection and severe outcomes from the virus when people are on multiple medications. And the biggest culprits were PPIs, proton pump inhibitors, or acid blockers. Why would that be? Well, your stomach acid is incredibly important in neutralizing parasites, viruses, invaders coming into your system, which this is going to be, your immune system is right there, a cell layer, just one cell distance between your gut and your immune system.

50:38All right. Your immune system is mostly located right around your gut. But if we're taking something, a chemical in a drug or smoking something and we're ingesting it, how does that impact our metabolism? I was going to get to that. Yeah. So number one, just really quickly, PPIs, opioids was the second and also psychiatric medication. So antipsychotics. Those are the three biggest culprits leading to poor outcomes. Looking at, again, when folks are consuming pharmaceuticals and having poor outcomes from that virus. So making you more susceptible to infectious diseases. Now, why is this? I can go through multiple layers on this.

51:22Let's look at the big, one of the big agents here, and this would be the way that it impacts your liver. Your liver is responsible for drug metabolism. That's like, even, let me give some respect to the liver. Okay. What, what word is in liver? Live. Live. Right. It's just using etymology. Like it's got some really important relevance for human health and functionality in our survival. A liver isn't something you could just get a new one. All right. But also the liver is the most regenerative organ in our bodies outside of skin, things like that. But your liver, you can get a portion of it sliced off and you can grow some of that liver back.

52:03Wow. That's like some lizard stuff that our bodies can do. Man, growing another tail, yeah. Yeah, our livers are very regenerative and they do so much to protect us. And again, it's responsible for drug metabolism. So all of those foreign items that are coming in, your liver is doing its very best. It's doing a lot of work. To process, but also to compartmentalize and send things different places, but also to store things. This is why today we have an epidemic. This is one of the leading causative agents for so many chronic diseases. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. What does that mean? So oftentimes fatty liver disease, we relate it.

52:43Well, just historically it was related to people who were drinking a lot. All right. The liver couldn't take all the alcohol. It would basically become, have an obese liver. Inflamed. Incredibly inflamed. And dysfunctional. And it wouldn't be able to process anything. Exactly. Exactly. And your liver also, again, it's in, don't, I just, I struggled to talk about this because it's not operating in isolation. It's in communication with your heart, your lungs, your brain. It's all connected. All connected in the same person. But non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, that is skyrocketed in recent years, increasing our risk for heart attacks and strokes, for diabetes.

53:20And in particular, sugar is one of the biggest problems because your liver also is handling the glucose you're taking in. So we talked about insulin shuttling glucose into your fat cells, muscle cells, but also it's going to get stored in your liver as glycogen. All right. So when that gets tapped, you know, like it reaches its full point and you got in your liver keeps on taking more and more of that burden. Like I'll take what I can. I'll take what I can. I'll take what I can. Because we can't keep shuttling this and your insulin resistance goes up, your insulin sensitivity for your other cells goes down, your liver's going to just keep getting kicked in its liver nuts, basically.

53:57Right, right. Just constantly. And so it's going to create this kind of inflamed state. Wow. And if your liver goes, man, like it's a wrap. It's a wrap. Yeah. So to relate all the stuff that you talked about - hard to keep the rest of your body healthy if the liver is not healthy. It's hard to keep your brain, your thoughts healthy. It's hard to keep your heart healthy, your skin, your other organs. Your liver is deeply connected to your skin health too. Yeah. Really? Yeah. The list goes on. What impacts the liver the most? What types of foods, substances hurt the liver the most? That's a tough question.

54:32But the things that you already mentioned, again, being that it's responsible for drug metabolism, alcohol metabolism as well. Are there any benefits to drinking alcohol? Well, that, you know, that's a, that's an inflammatory question, but I mean, you know, my, one of my dearest friends and mentors, Dr. Daniel Amen. I mean, he's looking at the brain. He's, he's been doing this stuff a long time. And he also, we, him and I send studies back and forth. And, you know, the thing is we're going to validate, we're going to affirm anything that we enjoy. And we're going to have a tendency to ignore. And I've even seen it in my clinical practice back in the day.

55:10People would be like, I don't want to know. Don't tell me anything that's going to make me think differently this thing that I enjoy. And I'm not about taking joy away. I'm a joy advocate out here. I am about informed consent. I am about intelligent usage and utilization of things. And so one of the things that we see, and by the way, humans have been consuming alcohol for a long time. Alcohol is actually a macronutrient. Okay. So this is important. We have fats, proteins, carbohydrates. This is what I was taught in my university. You know, I went to a private university first. I went out to Lindenwood, but you know, my university education was telling me there's these three macronutrients and these are your three things you got to focus on from a nutritional perspective and manage calories.

55:56Those are the two things to do. But in reality, water is a macronutrient as well. And alcohol is a macronutrient. Your body can use alcohol to fuel processes. That's what makes it a macronutrient. That being said, When you consume alcohol, it does something really interesting. it kicks on this phenomenon it's called fat sparing and so you might be you you know you and i just hanging out here now and we haven't eaten in a while our body's going to be utilizing our stored fat for energy should it need to right it can break down stored glycogen from the muscles and from the liver yeah but if we're just chilling in a relaxed state the body's really good at using stored fat when we're just doing low impact things.

56:40All right. Now we, we bring some alcohol here and we drink that suddenly fat burning stops completely. Your body automatically switches over completely to utilizing that alcohol because this is why this is what makes it different. Your body can't store alcohol. Your body can store the other macronutrients, but alcohol is incredibly volatile. We evolved. If we're really going to look at this picture, hundreds of thousands of years ago, early humans would find fruit that had fallen from the trees or whatever that had begun to get rotten and ferment, right? And consume that. And we developed over time, the ability to metabolize that ethanol, to metabolize the alcohol that's getting resulted from this fermentation process.

57:29So it's like, we have that pathway. It doesn't mean that all alcohol is bad. We have it for a reason. So again, I'm trying to create a balanced indication of this here. However, then we created distillation. We was like, okay, this naturally occurring alcohol here, not enough. We need more liquor in the liquor. We need more alcohol. We need spirits. All right. And so this process of distillation took it to another level, increasing the alcohol content of things abnormally. and it hits our cells different. This is something that's, again, it's relatively recent in human evolution to have access to so much alcohol at one time.

58:04And so with that being said, and with fat sparing taking place again, this shuts down fat burning, all right? Especially if you drink at night. You're not burning fat overnight. Yeah, it's, again, your body has to use that immediately and your liver is immediately going on red alert because it has to try to process this without killing you because I don't think we really realize or talk about often in our culture how many people die from alcohol poisoning, right? Really? Not just the deaths, but also the resulting brain damage that takes place. Like I just lost my father recently and I was actually at his funeral about two and a half weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago now.

58:45And he had been in a assisted living facility for about 15 years because of drugs and alcohol. Really? Creating brain damage. and he developed epilepsy from that. And I've seen this again, real time, firsthand. I grew up in that environment. I grew up during the crack epidemic. I've seen the impact that it had on my family members. I've lost family members to violence and the associated consumption of these things. I've seen it firsthand. And so I had a decision to make. Am I gonna follow that path or am I gonna do something different? And let me tell you, Louis, this is why I'm here today, man.

59:17It's very difficult to change when you're in an environment that you're inundated with the stuff I saw it as the only way until I got exposure to something else. Little happy accidents, little moments like getting bussed out in the quote, descend program to Lafayette high school and getting exposure to a different environment. Having a friend that lived out there and going over to his house and seeing like, wait a minute, you guys aren't getting woken up by people fighting, stuff breaking at night. Like you can just go to sleep and it's like, cool. Like everything's going to be normal when you wake up in the morning.

59:50Like it created this sense of certainty and peace. And I'm just like, oh, I'm going to live here when I quote grow up. And you've been out to my house out there right by Lafayette is so crazy, man. And I didn't think about that until we moved in like that week. I was like, oh my God, you know, and this is this, this speaks to the power that we have because it's not just, we're not just victims of our environment. We are products of our environment. Absolutely. We don't have any choice but to be humans are incredibly adaptable. What's different about us is that we're also creators of our environment.

1:00:23We can consciously create the environment that makes health automatic, that makes healthy choices easy and accessible. We can create an environment that makes love and joy and friendships more accessible, safety more accessible, creativity more accessible. This is what makes us so special. Other animals, again, this is what makes humans exceptional. Shout out to the beavers. You know what I'm saying? They can build dams. They got their own beaver life. But with us as human beings, we have the ability to think externally of all these things, right? You know, I don't really want to disrespect beavers.

1:01:02Shout out to all the beavers in the dams. But my point being that in reality, regardless of the circumstances, maybe the dam that the beaver built, we can foresee, we can plot, plan, we can create, use different materials. We can think about and measure and monitor all the problems with it. We can think upstream, downstream. I know beavers think about that too. Shout out to the beavers. Okay. But bottom line is, you know, for us today, for us to take full control of our ability to create and for, but for us to do this, and this is something that I'm so grateful for you because you've been on a mission to talk about, for us to do that and really understand our power to create, we have to put aside our victim story.

1:01:45We have to take responsibility for our lives. Watch out now. You're gonna get people coming after you. Tell people to let go of our victim story. Listen. But what if you're raised in a challenging place and all you have is food stamps and you don't have the jobs? I'm that guy. You're in a food desert and you're obese already and you can't get a job and your parents are not around. What if all these stories? Most of the people who are being warriors to try and say, listen, this is not fair out here. It's about access. You have access. They don't. I come from that. I come from conditions where I didn't have access.

1:02:25I come from conditions where I was in the most poverty state here in the United States. I was getting food from charities to feed myself and my family. My mother, and again, like, well, why don't you guys just work harder? My mother worked overnight at a convenience store. She got stabbed eight times and almost died. Okay. I lost my father to crack in alcohol. So when people are talking about this stuff, they don't really know what they're talking about. You're trying to stand up for people. Yes, it matters. You want to have access to health, to healthy relationships, to a healthy environment.

1:02:59It was a risk me going outside because of a drive by. I grew up in that environment. But what people don't talk about and don't understand is all the beauty that exists there too. There's so much beauty. There's so much kinship. It's under volatile circumstances. It's like war. It's like soldiers bonding. All right. It's real. Coming together, helping each other, supporting each other. Exactly. And we also developed this resilience that most people would never understand. And so, yes, creating the conditions where this is normalized, where people have access, that's one part. But even with that story, it's been like, oh, people need more access to healthcare.

1:03:36What kind of healthcare, the kind of healthcare that is simply medicating symptoms and not helping people to address the root causes of their conditions. that are making these companies, multi, multi, multi-billion dollar companies more profitable while people continue to suffer. And by the way, one of the studies that I referenced is looking at obesity and chronic disease. Being in that state in a low-income environment makes it harder to get out of that environment. And that's a fact. And we know it. I know it experientially. Until I got healthier, I couldn't, I didn't know, I couldn't, I didn't have the awareness, the energy to lift myself out of that situation.

1:04:12So the access matters, yes, but also we also have a choice. We also have power to change even within the most tough, trying, difficult, toxic, abusive circumstances. We have the ability to make a difference, even if it's just the difference in our own mind. Even if we're in an abusive situation at which I've been in, I grew up in it. I had the ability to change my perception. I could have been sitting here today with you and holding on to that story about all the bad things that happened to me from my parents, all the violence, all the abuse. But I chose to change my perception, to forgive them, to see even the glimmer of good that was in my stepfather, which there was actually a lot.

1:05:00And we got to celebrate that at his funeral and all these people that got to see him because he got clean. He had to. He's in this adult living facility and all these people coming up and sharing these stories that I never met before.

1:05:15really sharing the same stories that I grew up with. His childlike nature, his always cracking jokes and making light of things and also his work ethic. Because even, that was the thing I chose to take. That was the number one thing. No matter what happened to him, no matter what he went through the night before, no matter how inebriated he was, he always got up and went to work. He never missed a day, never missed a day. And so I picked that up. And so my work ethic, when I'm not doing this, I'm researching, I'm working myself, I'm studying, I'm teaching every day. I'm infatuated with it. I must do it.

1:05:55And I picked that up from him. Now, also knowing this is the case and hearing these stories by all these people that were coming up. I chose to see that childlike nature because this also was the first man that I ever met that beat a video game. All right. He had Mike Tyson punch out, you know, he got the Nintendo, he beat the game, you know, he'd be up late at night. Sometimes I can get up, you know, after my brother and sister went to sleep and hang out with them, but there was this childlike nature, but something would change. Something would change over time with, and he had this story. He came from an environment of abuse of, you know, substance abuse as well.

1:06:33And he's replaying that and then the demons will come out all the things that he's been exposed to all the oppression all the things and who's he going to take that out on the people he loves most but i i chose to see that he was doing the best that he could with the person that he was circumstances what he was handed and so we get to choose the meaning we get to choose how we allow these things to control us or how we take control it's a powerful story man thanks for sharing this and for, you know, there's people that are going to listen to this or watch this. And I know people are going to share this with their friends who are maybe struggling or dealing with health challenges, or maybe are in cities or environments or communities that aren't of a culture or mindset of health, or they don't have the access to healthy foods and the culture chooses unhealthy decisions.

1:07:29And it's just, they don't have the time to think they're exhausted, they're stressed, they're overwhelmed, they don't have the money and life didn't go their way to be able to make those choices or they've been unhealthy for a while now. What would you say to those individuals who are struggling when they're just like, it's easy for you to say, even though I hear this story that you were in that situation, but it just doesn't seem possible for me. What would you say to them. The piece that I didn't share that we've talked about in the past was that when I was living in that environment, I was diagnosed with an arthritic condition of my spine and bones.

1:08:07I was rapidly deteriorating. I was on a plethora of medications just to be able to sleep at night because the pain would keep me up at night. It was absolute terror. It was anguish. It was constant pain and fear. I was living in fear. I was living in fear of standing up because every time I stood up, this sciatic lightning bolt would just go down my leg. And so I just stopped standing up as much as possible. And at the time, the physician that I was working with, the first physician, he, of course, took a look at my MRI. He told me that I had the spine of an 80-year-old person when I was just 20.

1:08:43I was just a 20-year-old kid. And he told me that this was incurable. I was just going to, this is unfortunately, he's going to have to live with this. He was sorry, but he was going to give me something to help me manage it. And there were two really popular drugs at the time, by the way. One was Celebrex. It's non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. And the other was Vioxx. All right. And if people know about Vioxx, Vioxx ended up killing. This was a drug that was distributed by Merck, one of the most powerful drug companies in the United States, even today. And this is, again, over 20 years ago.

1:09:16Vioxx factually killed 40 ,000, at least 40 ,000. The estimation is 40 ,000 to 60 ,000 Americans killed. This is a fact. Killed 40 ,000 at minimum of our people. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of injuries and cardiovascular events that took place. And what they did was they knew the risk. They saw it in the drug trials. But they did a little bit of this, a little bit of that to hide the risk. and one of my friends and colleagues, John Abramson, stunts a really great work on this. He works in healthcare policy at Harvard, no big deal. And he was brought in in litigation in a lot of these big drug company trials.

1:09:58Drug companies just regularly, it's always something going on. And I'm talking about massive loss of life here, 40 ,000 people. And my physician put me on Celebrex, not Vioxx. I would have taken either without question. I just wanted to get out of pay. I might not be sitting here with you because a lot of young people died as well. All right. Now, all of this to say, even in that circumstance, there was little pieces of hope. There were little pieces of light that I can grab onto because especially in those dark times when it seems like everything is wrong, you're totally alone. Even my own mother, who I talked about earlier in her situation that she went through, she disappeared.

1:10:40You know, she was going through something in her life i lost my mom i couldn't you know she wouldn't i couldn't find where she was at she left me and this is after she borrowed some money from my refund check from umsell from my college i got a refund check and i was paying my rent with that and my mom asked to borrow some money i was like mom listen i have to pay this rent that she disappeared my mom my own mother left me to get put out on the street i'm in chronic pain oh i don't even have my mom okay let alone my dad you know i just i never even met my biological father you want me to keep going on how tough this can be on paper.

1:11:13Right. But the bottom line was this, even in those conditions, what happened was I grabbed onto that glimmer of light and I kept ignoring it for a long time. And that glimmer of light was my grandma who kept on checking in on me every now and then. Like she knew that something was not right with me. And I just remember like how much she loved me and how much she invested in me and how much she knew I would be somebody and I would do something special in my life.

1:11:48And so just being able to honor her, I decided to get my ass up and to do something about this. After all of these physicians told me that they couldn't help me, I had to decide, what am I going to do about this myself? Because I'd been outsourcing my health and my potential to other people. And that's impossible, right? You could have people that can help you along the way, that can provide resources and coaching, but change is from the inside out. And so I made a decision to get well. Most people never do that. Please hear what I'm saying. Despite your circumstances, decide, decide. And the resources, there are things right now in your world and your environment that are already there that you're not seeing because you're tuned into how fucked up it is and how incapable you are.

1:12:34As soon as I made the decision to get well, no matter what, matter of fact, this is what I said. All right. And this is crazy. I was like, I'm going to I'm going to get well. And I asked the question, what can I do? What can I do to feel better? What can I do to get well? What can I do to be the healthiest person in the world? I had no right to ask a question like that in the circumstances that I was in. And within a week, a friend of mine who I'd known her for years, she took me to Wild Oats and the Whole Foods. Like, I'd known her for years and she was in chiropractic school. I thought she was so weird.

1:13:10Right. Her and her friends like she'd invite me to some things just like, man, you guys are so weird. She took me. But now I'm seeing through a new new lens. I'm seeing through new eyes and I'm at this place and I'm going over to the books and I'm like looking at my condition this arthritic condition and I'm finding there's studies here like wait a minute this I'm deficient in vitamin d but I'm wait a minute omega-3s like where am I am I getting any of this stuff like and I found out like there's a mismatch there was an environmental mismatch my body was a result of the inputs that i was giving it and so now i started to change the inputs and start to give my body all these things that had been lacking but it was based on something that was already present that now i'm tuned into and by the way i didn't have money i didn't have money okay and so now i'm in a situation where i'm risking for me to buy this omega-3 supplement it, I'm risking paying my light bill.

1:14:08All right. But here's the rub. This is what happened. When I start to invest in myself, I start to feel better. I start to make more energy. I start to find more opportunities. I start to acquire more resources. When I first bought some goji berries, which are pretty popular now, there's tons of studies. And I talk about it in the book as well, just one of these great foods, but they didn't have them at Whole Foods or like even at these health food stores yet and I was like getting them from this there was like a Chinese herbal place so they did like acupuncture and stuff and I went in there and I like talking to the guy and it's just like a super like I felt like I was in a movie you know um you got some goji berries I can get for me yes yeah you know it's just so interesting and and by me doing that and investing in my health within about two to three years I was getting goji berries from free from the top company that was distributing goji berries and this is true story all right as a matter of fact this is i mean they saw me they were doing an event somewhere it's like one of those health expos and i and somebody was asking a question to one of the people in the booth and the person wasn't she was like working with somebody else i was like oh yeah and i started telling her about whatever it was maybe it was like chocolate or something and then the other employee but who was actually the manager of the setup she heard me talking and she came over me she was like who are you?

1:15:27Like, that was incredible. Cut to, I ended up getting connected to the CEO of the company. They sent me a pallet to my house in Florissant, Ferguson, a pallet of these superfoods. That's awesome. And I started teaching nutrition classes until, bro, do you understand? That's cool. That was from me saying, yes, me investing in myself, me saying, I decide to do this no matter what, I will find a way. I don't want people to downplay their capacity for greatness. I don't want people to downplay their capacity for figuring things out, for finding a way where there's a will, there's a thousand ways. Yeah.

1:16:04I love that, man. And I think it's also important to know that, I mean, I don't think life is designed to be easy for everyone. I don't think anyone is supposed to have an easy life. Even if you're born in wealth, you still have challenges and other things you got to deal with, maybe not money challenges, but other stuff you got to overcome. But I feel like once we accept, they're like, okay, there's supposed to be some challenges. How can I accept or embrace that this is a part of life always and find peace with the challenge and start looking at things differently than it's going to feel a lot easier as opposed to hard and challenging.

1:16:45So it's a perspective around that as well. So I'm grateful for that story because I just think people need to hear that. And I think people who feel like there's no way out need to see more studies, more stories like yours explaining what is possible when you have a lack of health, you can't stand up, your parents are gone, you got no money, you're in a sick culture and community and town, all that. So it's possible, which I think is really inspiring. There's something you said there that I'm just curious. I wanted to touch on about 40 ,000 ish people dying from a drug that was prescribed, uh, from our health professionals and health companies, drug companies.

1:17:30Do you know the stats on how many drug related deaths there are a year in America? Absolutely. I do. Of course I do. How many, how many people die due to drugs every year? This is according to the EJS Center for Ethics at Harvard. Again, reputable organization. And the research has affirmed. And by the way, I did all of these resources. Anything that I talk about, you can triple check. All right. And so again, it's the EJS Center. Because something like this is paradigm shifting. The EJS Center for Ethics at Harvard determined that about 180 ,000 Americans die annually from prescribed, from properly prescribed medications.

1:18:11180 ,000 die a year from prescribed medications. From like doctors saying, take this. Yes. Properly prescribed medications. Now, again, this is not to create any kind of controversy. We need our physicians. We need pharmaceutical companies. We just need more ethics. We need better understanding. We need more education around the possible downsides and not treating a symptom instead of helping people to remove the underlying cause of the condition so they don't need the drug. They don't need the added risk. Right. Now, that's just deaths. We're not talking about the millions of hospitalizations.

1:18:45Again, these are all confirmed, but this is why most people don't know this. And this is why we need to have a little bit more compassion for this research from these, again, from researchers at Harvard, is that this isn't something that's easily checked off on a death certificate, right? We know today about comorbidities, but saying that this person died from a drug, properly prescribed drug, requires that the researchers dig so adamantly into the data. Finding the cause. It is very difficult because it could be anaphylactic shock. It could be heart attack, whatever. And what caused that? Yeah, yeah.

1:19:22You feel me? this is the problem. This is another mismatch with perceived data that the public sees in actual data. There's a mismatch. There's probably more people die every year that are somehow related to prescribed drugs. It's very difficult. It's very difficult to say. It's very difficult to pinpoint, especially if time has gone on. And now again, but we have a model today of healthcare that is drug dominant. We have a drug model of healthcare in the United States. It's not true healthcare. It's a model that is farming sick people. It's a model that is dependent on repeat customers, right?

1:20:02You getting well is losing a customer. Why on earth would they do that? It's just not logical, right? And so the more people that are taking these prescription medications and the longer they're taking them, the better. It's just, we have an unfortunate healthcare model that depends on people to be sick in order for it to be sustainable. and our economy here in the United States, obviously, there's a lot of problems. One of the safest, most surefire bets for investors is investing in healthcare because we have so many sick people. It is one field that continues to grow. And so for our economy to depend on the sickness of its citizens, we have a very twisted reality right now, which goes back to we have to change the culture.

1:20:48And the culture starts with you and your family because here's the cool thing about culture. Yes, we can go and visit a culture, right? I just visited a culture in Maui, for example. I've never been to Hawaii. That was amazing. And so we can go and visit a culture, but when we go to a culture, we're taking our culture with us. And so people are seeing it. People are seeing your culture, the culture of your family, everywhere you go, you're modeling it. That's all I needed. This kid from those circumstances, I just need to see what health looks like. I just needed, I just needed a glimmer of light from somebody that cared about me.

1:21:24Right. Those things starts to add up because also most importantly though, for me to see those things, there was a willingness that I had to turn on within myself. I had to stop making excuses and turn that willingness on. And even if you live in a community or a city that has a culture that is not health focused or is struggling to get there because of circumstances. What I'm hearing you say, correct me if I'm wrong, you can change your individual culture and the culture of you and your personal environment of your room, your home, your, you know, the block you're on and the people in your life, but it has to start with you.

1:22:01And people in your life may not come on board in that culture for years. You may say, hey, look, this is hurting you and I'm making this change, but they may stay stuck for a while until they see you truly modeling it time and time again to seeing lasting change. It's hard to get others to convert specifically family members sometimes who are struggling the most. And that can be extremely painful. If you have kids, you already know that this is, it is a challenge to say the least. And so this is what I created this book for was thankfully, again, our life experiences. there's this great quote from my friend Michael Beckway.

1:22:42That's my guy. He just texted me on the way in here. Great guy. He said that God doesn't call the qualified. God qualifies the called. Life qualifies you for the work of the situation that you are presented with. Where I'm coming from, it would be very unlikely that I would end up in this position. But I spent years, for example, working as a nutritionist and seeing people day in, day out, just like one after the other. Doing, you know, I was going to all these big organizations, you know, and then going in and doing these different talks and things like that. But I got to see. And the thing is, some things like all you got to do is just pay a little attention and you'll get it.

1:23:19I got to see the biggest complaint or perceived challenge that people had in changing their health and to hear from their own mouths. Do you want to know what it was? What was it? It was other people. Right. The reason that people had most often was my husband won't, my kids won't, you don't understand, I'm making this for them, whatever. Like there was always pointing the finger and I would get them to point it back to themselves. But also it developed these tools to help them to change those conditions. And so with that being said, we have to understand that we know our family better than anybody.

1:23:56but part of that is like we tend to operate from this one line of communication the thing that doesn't work with our family members keep doing the same thing over and over again and instead of like using it to our advantage especially being a parent we've got to be the benevolent dictator and not like a democracy is cool we can get some votes in but also like creating structures to where we understand like we are the leader of this family and start to leverage psychology and understanding these little lives or big, you know, I've got my two sons in my house. One's 11, one's 22. He's in his last semester of college.

1:24:32And I know their personalities and I know what excites them and brings about more joy. And I know what de-excites them and brings about more frustration, right? I know those triggers. and so utilizing psychology, social psychology to create conditions to where all this stuff starts to work together to change that family dynamic in the culture. So how do we do this? I mean, obviously, again, this is going to be personality-based. Number one, we got to realize our power, but planning out, and this is just the simple thing. I started, I said, this is the most important takeaway from the episode, making a decision to have those three family meals a week.

1:25:14How do we do that when this hasn't been normalized in our family, right? How do we do this if most times, if you're growing up like I did, I can count on my hands, Lewis, how many times I sat down and ate a meal with my parents. Wow, grow it up. Yeah, I'm not kidding. I can count on my hands, right? One parent's always gone, right? And also, it was more like a free-for-all. We eat at the same time, but we just go, like plop down in front of a TV, video game, whatever, or if we're out somewhere, whatever, but we would rarely sit down for a meal together. Okay. How do we do this? I think we would have revolted a little bit.

1:25:47Like if they're like, okay, no technology, we're going to sit down, we're going to have dinner together, we're going to have fun. Because Lewis said so. That's not the way to go about it. Yeah. All right. We've got to find, we've got to leverage human psychology, which is something very simple. we don't like things taken away from us unless they're being replaced with something of equal or greater value. Okay. It makes it easier. All right. And also we resist change. You know, the human brain is always trying to sync up and create routine and pattern and automate behaviors. And so understand like this might be a little bit uncomfortable, but find some creativity in it.

1:26:24And you're going to have to evoke as a parent, more patience, more compassion, more of an attitude of figuring things out, right? Becoming an investigator. But I don't have time. I don't have the energy. I don't have the resources. That's part of the reason you don't have any of that stuff. Right. All right. It's the lack of this family dynamic and all the peace and connection and health that that brings. So this is a top priority because this factually creates a protective force field around your family. And so with that being said, those three days, Let's find a way to make this joyful. Right.

1:27:00And so even in the food preparation part, I give some strategies in this, the kitchen, changing the kitchen culture. Right. So, for example, somebody might like to cook, but they don't do it often. What would be an attractor for you to do it more often? Right. Leverage your own psychology. Would it be like playing your favorite music? You know, Lewis loved a salsa, like throwing on a salsa music and like dancing where you make it, you know, your loved ones. Would it be putting on a show and binge? That's what my wife does. She watched Real Housewives or something. while she's cooking. One of those cities.

1:27:29I don't know, you know, but that's like her kind of guilty pleasure. It's like her desserts when she's eating healthy. She knows that I'm not, I'm not going to be participating in this. So I don't need, and so she'll do that. Or she'll talk to her sister, her mom, you know, on the phone while she's cooking, like she's finding a way to leverage the time. Right. And so the same thing we can invite our kids in to the process and depending on the age and what they're used to as well, it's going to depend on how they fit into these things. One of the things I'm guilty of, unfortunately, was, yes, my kids, both of my, all three of my kids are really good cooks.

1:28:02I have my daughter back in St. Louis, but all of my, all of my three kids can cook. But they could be even more advanced if I would have let them in the kitchen more often. Because a lot of times when we're busy and my kid will come in and like, dad, can I help? No, not now, buddy. Or not now, baby. Like we got to, you know, I'm trying to just get this done. I started to, I finally recognized this and I started to turn on that yes muscle. Yeah. Come help me do this. Come chop this up or. Unfortunately, it's because I'm a very data driven human. I came across a study that showed that. The majority of kids today don't know how to cook for themselves.

1:28:43Not all I do. Yeah. All right. It is, it's like an endangered species skillset to be able to cook. It's like woodshop or something, you know, it's like, I don't know how to put me in a freaking hammer, I'm like a birdhouse. But so realizing that, oh man, this is a valuable life skill that I'm taking away from my child being able to. And guess what's going to happen when they don't have that skill set? They're going to eat mostly ultra processed. Convenience, fast food. Takeout. Again, this is a responsibility as a parent to be able to pass this on and be shifting the culture to be able to do it.

1:29:16Seems like a lot of work. I don't know if I got a lot of the time. We don't even got to get into that part. We don't got to get into that part. let's just stick with the three meals with the family each week. I like that, yeah. So what can we do to make this more attractive and leverage time? I've experimented. All right. One of the things, for example, that we do is we have, we know that there's going to be like a post-meal something, a post-meal event. This could be a freestyle competition. This could be a family game. You know, it just, you got to get leverage the psychology of the room and know like what is going to make this this connection opportunity more valuable right and so a lot of times too if there's a meal prep opportunity even inviting them into the meal suggestion like you know asking my youngest son like okay we're going to do a dessert tonight which dessert do you want after family dinner oh all he hears is dessert right you don't have to have the resistance of like i can't game with my friend right he's like oh i love i love desserts you know like oh i want that right so it's just like these little psychological sure sure tools i love that and so again finding a way and there's there's so many cool resources and by the way we've got a resource guide with the new cookbook for like for example there's these cards that have like these questions like family questions you ask each family member you know as we're having connection yeah and so one of the things we do and you you do something similar before we have our meals we also go around and we share what's your breath that we're grateful for from the day I love that.

1:30:42Right. We've been doing that for years. Right. I love this. I want people to get this book because I think this is going to change the game for a lot of individuals and families. It's Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. Make sure you guys go pick up a copy, get one for a friend, you know, all that stuff. It's the companion cookbook to Eat Smarter, which is a national bestseller featuring 100 family-friendly recipes that are mouth-watering, delicious recipes to help you boost your metabolism, up-level your energy, and start living a happier life. And with what I heard, 43 % obesity in the U.S., 80-something percent of unhealthy metabolism in the U.S., this is a powerful solution for a lot of people these days to come together, create more harmony, more family, more friendship, and be healthier in the process.

1:31:33Make sure you guys get Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. So where people want to go is to eatsmartercookbook.com. and right now as of this recording we put together something really special to add on because as Louis is saying I love this about you is that what about the argument side well it's not just going to be from my perspective because this year we're putting on the first annual family health and fitness summit oh let's go and you're going to be able to hear from some of the leading experts in health and fitness in the world that have kids and how they're able to handle things like that's great comparing meals with a busy schedule with dealing with picky eaters with saving money on groceries the list goes on and on we got people like lela ali right that's great defeated boxing champion but she also won won the show chop the cook cooking show twice wow i've eaten with lela several times oh my goodness so good we got gabby reese as well we've got dr will bolsovitz we've got dr daniel amen oh man and these are just some of the people so this is going to be a virtual event.

1:32:34Oh, nice. And people get access to it for free. That's amazing. When they pre-order the book, it's a$297 summit ticket and you get that for free. Eatsmartercookbook.com. That's right. Eatsmarter. You just got to get one of those books and you get that summit. Yeah. Eatsmarter cookbook, just one copy and you get free access to the summit. We're also doing a 25K health and fitness giveaway. You get registered for that. So many cool things. And you can go right now and get it and you'll have access to all that stuff. for a good scent that stuff. This is just for the pre-order. All right, so definitely take advantage of this now.

1:33:06And the summit, again, I'm very excited about this because we're bringing together more voices and more powerful people in this community to create a movement of health and wellness to really shift it so that health is normalized in our culture. That's why everyone needs to get eatsmartercookbook.com. Go there, get a book or two. Give it to a friend, family member, someone who likes to cook, someone who wants to get into cooking. Make sure you guys get a few copies if you can. EatSmarterCookbook.com and follow you everywhere, man. The Model Health Show is a powerful resource. Twice a week now?

1:33:40Yeah. Twice a week now? I won't say thanks to me. You're right. I had to do it for years, man. You didn't tell me. Yeah. Make sure you guys go to the Model Health Show. You're everywhere. Instagram, Facebook, all the places. We'll have it all linked up as well in the description. But get the book. Eat Smarter Cookbook. We'll have an image popped up on the screen. We'll have it in the description. So much more we could talk about, man, but I want people to go take action there. 100 family-friendly recipes to help boost your metabolism, up-level your energy, and start living a happier life. And if people want to hear your three truths and your definition of greatness, we'll link up the previous episode where you share those things.

1:34:22Sean, I'm grateful for you, man. Grateful for your heart. Appreciate it. Acknowledge you for... I don't know anyone who researches as much as you. Maybe there's like a handful of people that do the research and find the studies and speak into these things the way you do. So I really appreciate the depth of knowledge around a lot of challenging topics and things that aren't always as they seem. One thing isn't always the way it is because it might have a few other things you have to go down the rabbit hole to understand the whole picture. So appreciate and acknowledge you. Thank you. Grateful for you, man.

1:34:54Thank you, man. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better.

1:35:31And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.