Good Life Project - How to Break the Grip of Cravings | Amy Shah, MD

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Are you tired of feeling like you’re powerless against your cravings, no matter how much you try to resist them? From unhealthy, yet irresistible snacks to binge-TV, we often feel helpless against the biochemical storm happening inside our bodies and brains that lure us into behaviors we know are not healthy or life-enhancing, yet, still, we keep saying yes to them. Thinking, “I’m better than this,” or trying to tap willpower isn’t enough. We need to understand what’s really happening and learn how to harness our physiology for good.Today's episode is going to change everything you thought you knew about cravings. To help guide us through this exploration, is double board-certified doctor and wellness expert specializing in food allergies, hormones and gut health, Amy Shah, MD. Building on the ideas from her new book, I’m So Effing Hungry: Why We Crave What We Crave – and What to Do About It, Amy takes us deep into the world of cravings, what they really are and are not, how they co-opt your body’s systems, and she even reveals how companies use this knowledge to manipulate our cravings and how we can take back control of our brains, and lives. So get ready to rewire your brain and discover natural ways to get that dopamine fix that will keep you motivated and focused on your goals. You can find Amy at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Aviva Romm, MD about how to work with our hormones to live better lives.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED. To submit your “moment & question” for consideration to be on the show go to sparketype.com/submit. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have the power to save ourselves because I think that if you understand your mind-body connection, then you can be the one to save yourself rather than waiting for some doctor pill device solution to come around. So are you tired of feeling like you are powerless against your cravings, no matter how much you try to resist them? Everything from unhealthy yet irresistible snacks to binge TV. We often feel helpless against the biochemical storm happening inside our bodies and brains that lower us into behaviors we know are not healthy or life enhancing. Yet still,

we keep saying yes to them, thinking I'm better than this or trying to tap willpower. It's not enough. And by the way, I am raising my hand here. We need to understand what's really happening and learn how to harness our physiology for good. In today's episode, we're going to change everything you thought you knew about cravings. We're going to deep dive into the science of dopamine and how it affects our neurological pathways, making it almost impossible to resist the allure of everything from foods to activities, even relationships. And to help guide us through this exploration is double board certified doctor and wellness expert specializing in food allergies, hormones, and gut health, Amy Shah. Training at Cornell, Harvard, and Columbia, Amy has devoted her career

to helping people transform their health using cutting edge nutritional and medical science. Her techniques to heal inflammation utilize the power of the microbiome to help digestion, obtain natural hormone balance, and heal food sensitivities. And she's a well-known expert also on intermittent fasting for women. And today, building on the ideas from her new book, I'm So F-ing Hungry. Amy takes us deep into the world of cravings, what they really are and are not, how they co-opt your body's systems. And she even reveals how certain companies use this knowledge to manipulate our cravings and how we can take back control of our brains, our cravings, and our lives. So get ready to rewire your brain and

discover natural ways to get that dopamine fix that will keep you motivated and focused on your goals in a truly healthy and life-affirming way. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. All the things that you have been exploring and talking about for years in the topic of the new book is interesting to me, both on a sort of like large scale public health basis, and also on a really personal level. So I am somebody who feels like I've been paying attention to the evolution of medicine and nutrition and functional medicine. And I want to eat in a health supporting way. I'm well read on a lot of nutritional science.

I'm well connected to leading voices in the space. And I have run countless personal experiments just in my own life from intermittent fasting to full-blown fasting, to keto, to all this stuff that so many of us have sort of explored. And still to this day, I find myself sometimes led by intense cravings and hunger that my rational mind literally observes the feeling and says, this doesn't make sense to me. I know this is not health supporting. And yet there are patterns that reoccur in my life and at times become so strong that it drives behavior. It literally would drive me to say, literally, I'm looking at something saying, I know this is not health supporting, and yet I'm going to do it anyway.

And I know I am not alone in this. So talk to me about the phenomenon in general. What is actually happening here? Yeah. Look, Jonathan, New Year's resolutions, right? We have the best of intentions. We know what's good for us. So we've been, not to exaggerate, but literally, there are things that hijack the neurological pathways, the hunger hormone pathways, and make us crave things that aren't good for us. There are companies, large companies, gaming, gambling, they know how this works. They know this complex system and what makes it activate the most. And so it almost becomes an issue that we're fighting against man-made explosions of dopamine, which is our feel-good, motivational, craving hormone. And it's fighting against, instead of an explosion, like a water

gun spray that nature provides for us with exercise or volunteering, being with our loved ones, eating healthy food. So this concept of learning how we crave what we crave is going to change not only how you eat, but also how you function in life. The way I describe it is there are many craving hormones, but our primary one is dopamine. And that's the one that makes you get up out of your chair, drive across town and get that thing, whether it be food, alcohol, drugs, you know, many, many things, porn, gaming, gambling, all fall under the dopamine pathway. And this pathway is so strong that it will override your best intentions. And it's often ingrained in a neurological loop that was created many years ago. Maybe you don't even realize why is it that the Kit Kat

really hits a spot, but maybe it's because when you were a kid, that's what you got when you wanted to get, you know, putting your parents give you a reward, or you went to a baseball game and you ate, you know, hot dogs and soda. And that's what you crave sometimes. And that's from childhood, these neurological pathways. So first understand where it's coming from. And people ask like, why would nature create this kind of negative pathway? But it actually is very, very helpful in a way. So when you get what you crave, you get a moment of satisfaction, happiness, but then almost a discomfort because your body wants you to go for it again. And that's how we are motivated to strive to get more fruit and vegetables and work and get mates and all of that stuff.

Because dopamine is a way of keeping us motivated to more of that. I'm well aware of the destructive aspects of this. But then is there some sort of ancestral basis for dopamine, like the dopamine cycle leading to cravings that would be really health supporting. And so like in generations ago or eons ago, like this cycle was set up in our bodies. I have to imagine anything that is sustained. It may have been hijacked or taken advantage of. I know you use the word hijacked by sort of modern commerce, but the pathway was there before. So like what health supporting, what constructive purpose did this serve in prior versions of human beings?

It's essential. It helped us survive. Imagine you're roaming through the forest and you see this beautiful tree and it's full of fruit. Your brain lights up. You eat that fruit. You get that burst of dopamine, right? Your body will tell your brain, hey, remember the way to this tree. Remember how it tasted. Remember the feeling. And so when you're in a time of war, famine, you forgot all about that tree. Your neurological pathway remembers, the dopamine pathway remembers, and it helps you in those times. And it keeps you motivated. Again, I told you dopamine is also a pleasure mixed with pain. And so a lot of the things that, and you know, this dopamine craving, it's that when you get something you really love and that you really crave through the dopamine pathway, it will be pain mixed with

pleasure. It's like you love it so much and you almost like, it's almost uncomfortable. It's not a pure joy effect. And it's because your brain wants you to keep, you know, forge, you keep remembering how to get that food, keep going back to that tree to help your family, to help survive. And so it's kind of helps us on our path to survival. You know, you could say the same thing about work, right? So when you get something that you've been working really hard on, you get all this like pleasure, but you also get almost like a disappointment and a discomfort almost to keep you motivated to do the next thing. So you get up the next day and you're like, you know what? That wasn't enough for me.

I'm going to keep going and I'm going to do more. And that's our dopamine pathway helping us stay motivated towards a goal. And so if you think about it that way, it becomes very clear that there are some positive ways to use the dopamine pathway that can help us get bursts of dopamine in a way that can be positive and helpful towards our ultimate goals in life of health and happiness and work goals if you use it in the right way. But in the natural form, there are always going to be like sprays of dopamine rather than the explosions that you would get from, like, say, using heroin. So the explosion is more of a modern manufactured effect and sometimes tied to, like, commercial interests. The way that you're describing that dopamine hit that we get that leads to these

intense feelings of craving and also often bundled with discontent, does it mimic the cycle that you often hear explored with glucose levels where you get, you know, like you have something that's sugary, you get a huge spike in glucose, the body secretes insulin, knocks it down, but it doesn't just knock it down to the baseline. It often drops it way below. So you go down into a hypo state and that now you're actually, you have a deficit. So that leads your body to say, oh, I need more of it to get back to just baseline. And it creates this wild, rapid, extreme cycling. Does dopamine work in any kind of similar way? It's similar in the sense that you can definitely have a baseline of dopamine. So your gut health, for example, is a great way to up your

baseline levels of dopamine, but then can definitely use up the dopamine. So, you know, the best example is drugs, right? Some of these recreational drugs that people use at parties will release so much dopamine that you have kind of refractory period where they'll feel down for a little while, but then they will crave that same level of dopamine release the next time. That's why that first, that one drink gives you the dopamine release. And then over time it's three, then over time it's 10, right? So definitely you change your own threshold. You can have different baselines. So it's two concepts.

You can have different baseline dopamine, and then you can also have different levels of cravings depending on how big of a release it's used to. And that's why it's very important to say, hey, stack up all the little healthy dopamine things that you can do for yourself about sunlight, movement, eating healthy foods, especially foods with high and certain amino acids that pump up that dopamine. Do the things that can stack up that dopamine so it can kind of mimic what we get with a Doritos and a Coke, which is that big release. Right. So they're the healthy replacements that

sort of have a compound effect that'll make you feel a similar way to the way that satisfying the craving does. So we've talked a bit about the physiological response. You also referenced two other things that I don't want to skip past because I think they're important in sort of like the craving experience. One is tie in with emotion. Talk to me more about this notion of how a craving that seems like it might be for a food or a drug or a thing or whatever it may be, might actually be tied not to any sort of legitimate need, but to something emotional, something that is more psychological is going on in our lives. I think everyone can relate or most people can relate to coming home

from work. This was me for so many years. I come home from work and I'm so exhausted. And I know it's a few hours before dinner, but I'm so exhausted that I just want a snack to make me feel comfortable and make me feel relaxed and just have me, you know, give me that feeling that you're looking for. And that's exactly what you're describing. There is no physiological need for me to eat food at that point, especially the foods that I was choosing. And I wanted to kind of calm the stress, comfort my brain. And I talked to so many people who can relate to something similar at the end of the stressful day or in times of intense stress that often we use the things that we know neurologically that will help us give us a sense of calm, even if it's a brief period of time. And I've talked to some of the most brilliant people who will say, but I need a snack or I need

to scroll on social media or watch Real Housewives or something. It's just comforting. And that's what you're talking about. It's that psychological need. And unfortunately for us, the food becomes the easiest, right? Like you can come home and have a snack on the way or have a snack when you get home and then you can have a snack after dinner and you can have a snack at work. And then it becomes like this complete cycle of snacks and drinks and all day long. When I lived in New York and I was busy in my training years, I always had a snack on hand. And I was so stressed that I thought I didn't have time to eat. And these constant infusion of snacks kept me comforted and kept my cortisol a little bit just for the brief moment. As you know, this is a huge issue in our current world. I opened the

book by talking about a scene out of Sex and the City where Miranda actually throws dishwashing liquid over the cake so that she won't go back into the garbage to get more. And it sounds ridiculous, but every one of us has had some version of that scenario where you literally have to leave the room or go to a different place or do something to stop yourself from completely eating the entire bread basket. Yeah. And I'm nodding along because I've had my version of that and I probably will again. And you said something which I think is really important not to skip over, which is you said, I have had this conversation with some of the smartest, most accomplished people in the world. This has nothing to do with intelligence. This has nothing to do with being accomplished or not. It has nothing to do

with developing the muscle of willpower. It has nothing to do with status or power or any of these things. This is something that crosses all humanity. This goes beyond that. This is so deeply ingrained in us. It's so physiologically and psychologically. It is such a profound impulse that we will literally talk to ourselves while we're doing the thing that is satisfying our craving saying, I know better. I know this isn't rational. I know this isn't health supporting. I know this isn't psychologically going to be the thing that's going to make me feel better long-term. And yet here I am saying yes to the thing again. And you could be a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and you don't get to opt out of this, which is counterintuitive because people are like, well, if you're really smart and you have all the great resources and you're well studied and you're rational and know what to do, yes, and that doesn't stop it.

And I wish that this basic premise, the one we just covered in a couple of minutes of how dopamine pathway works, could be shared with our young adults. I wish it was shared with me when I was struggling because I didn't understand. I thought I had to just intuitively go with what my brain was telling me to choose. And I didn't realize that those pathways were maybe set when I was a kid. And now I do have the power to change those pathways into a positive way. It's like some of us, it sounds like you and me, we learned the hard way that this makes sense now. But what if we knew this from the beginning? Like I tell my kids who are

teens now, of course, you're not going to choose the orange if you have orange soda, but here's why. And here's why you might want to have the fruit instead so that we can start to educate people. So because it's 71% of grocery stores are now ultra processed food and 75% of adolescents diets are ultra processed. And so we're moving in a direction where this is going to cause catastrophic results, which, you know, of course, is already doing that with diabetes and heart disease and depression. But our generation consumes about 60%.

They're at 75%. And this is only in the last 70 years that all of this has happened in the rapidly changing environment of food, as well as social media. And so I think that, unfortunately, if we don't understand this, we're just moving towards catastrophe. The numbers are out. I mean, it's catastrophic numbers. And that also brings us to what's behind that 71%. Is it that there's a commercial interest because you can control the experience of the food to a degree where you can control demand. And then that then leads to increased sales, increased revenue. Like, is it that linear? It's a tough question

because it's like saying in medicine, people will say, well, doctors are keeping us fat and sick. You know, of course they're not actually trying to keep you fat and sick, but are they doing things that are leading you to be more fat and sick? It's the same thing as a food industry, right? They're not necessarily wanting you, Jonathan, to have depression and disease. However, they want you to come back and get more of their stuff. They want you to eat, consume more and buy more and spread the word that this is the irresistible flavor that you're going to love. So inadvertently, that's what's happening because they're able to create, for example, a bliss point, a point where you get that dopamine release. It has a perfect flavor, texture,

and a combination of spices, sweet, salty, that could never be created with actual food items, right? So I wouldn't say they're knowingly meeting in a room. And there is evidence that they are meeting in rooms to discuss how to make it more palatable. But I don't think it's necessarily to create the problems. I think they do want to turn a blind eye to it though, because of course, if it's more shelf stable, tastier, it's great for profits. Nobody wants to create products that go bad after a couple of days and that don't keep you coming back for them. I mean, that's not a recipe for a successful processed food product. So that's the problem. It's like a conundrum. Yeah, so it's not about an intent to cause harm.

It's about the reality that for some reason, the foods that tend to have the palatability, the sweetness, the mouthfeel, all these different things that are manipulable in ultra processed foods also probably have a very high level of overlap with foods that actually are not conducive to supporting health in a really meaningful way. And because of that, it's not

that there's an intention to make the population sick or depressed or miserable, but because increasing demand from a commercial standpoint often overlaps with creating the type of nutritional products or foods that is not great for health. Like you said, there's this paradox. It's really, it leads to an outcome, which is not super great. I knew you were going to be fun. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. It was interesting in doing a bit of research for our conversation, and I'm certainly constantly devouring whatever studies are coming out nutritionally. Literally, as we record this today, a study came out from the University of Leeds. I'm going to read you this. The opening line in this says, scientists have decoded the physical process that takes place in the mouth when a piece of chocolate is eaten as it changes from a solid into a smooth emulsion that many people find totally irresistible. Blew my mind. Literally, we have a team of researchers at a major university trying to figure out why chocolate is so irresistible, like engineering every single element of it to try and figure it out. Yeah, exactly. And when you look at

ultra processed foods, for example, all of this research that they've done to create these very hyper palatable foods. And if you really classify these certain foods as ultra-processed, which I'll tell you how you can classify it as ultra-processed, then they have commonalities. You group them together and they unequivocally increase caloric intake, increase their chance of diabetes, of depression, of early death. And so we can safely now say that all of these foods are very bad for your mental and physical health. However, the fact is, is that this is a whole area of commercialism that, you know, is really difficult to change because how do you convince people that this is, you know, bad for you, except for, I think they should just label foods and make it easy for people and say, this is ultra processed as defined by the NOVA classification.

And that would be, I think, the ideal thing to change the tide. And so people can say, hey, I'm working on my cravings right now. I'm really trying to reset my dopamine pathways. I'm probably not going to pick the thing that has the ultra processed on it. And that's, I think, what I would do and what I do. So the definition through the NOVA classification, which is the classification where they, that's how they did all these studies, is that if you take a food and you look at the back ingredients and there are ingredients that

could never be found in a kitchen or any culinary setting. It's considered ultra-processed. So if you cannot recreate the bag of chips in your kitchen with access to any ingredient, culinary ingredient, then it's ultra-processed. And so if you think about how much of our food is like, you know, Cheetos, Oreos is ultra processed. It's pretty staggering. So it's really just the fruits and vegetables, meats and dairy.

And then the minimally processed is like, you know, your yogurt with honey. I found that that classification to me made it a little bit easier because instead of taking my daughter through drive-through on the way home from dance, I was like, you know what? Maybe I'll just throw together like a pasta at home with just real ingredients. And it's going to not be that much healthier in my old mind, but in my new mind, understanding this ultra-processed thing, it's a lot healthier. And even if she ends up eating it with a salad, even better, right? So it could be five minutes through the drive-through or 10 minutes at home. Yeah. No, I mean, just having

that definition, I think at least it equips you to make better choices, whether you make them or not, it's still a big question, but at least you have the metric or the measure. In fairness to the study I just shared also in the headline, And this I think is fascinating too, because I think it speaks to potentially like, let's not label big food as the enemy or like science that's really trying to like research the palatability of food, but can we collaborate to create things? What that study actually went on to say was that they realized that that release process is really important to the sensation and that the fat that is deeper inside the chocolate actually plays a really limited role in the satisfaction

that we get from it. And their question was, could we actually potentially reduce the volume of fat in the chocolate knowing that that doesn't, at least according to the research, contribute substantially to the feel that leads us to crave it so much. So they're literally saying, can we ultra process for good, not for bad? Which I think is really like, I wonder how many people are looking at that and will over time. It's a little freaky on the one hand, because now you're really talking about a level of food engineering that gets concerning. But can you actually harness all these ideas and these tools and this wisdom for good? Can we actually swing the pendulum back and say, science actually, let's harness all of

this. If we're going to do engineering, let's see if we can close the gap between engineering for both being able to support organizations and jobs and people, and at the same time, health for the people who are buying the products. Absolutely. I think that smart entrepreneurs listening to this, for example, could say, hey, isn't there a way to make a chip or a bar or a cookie that wasn't ultra processed, but still was delicious? That would be an amazing thing because you would still want it from its sugar, salt, and fat content, for example, because we have some inherent taste buds both in our mouth and our gut, but we would also be moving our population in the right direction. So I think there's

definitely a big opportunity, I think. I'd buy products that I think fit that criteria much more often because I know I want chocolate, but I want the one that would have the least amount of artificial ingredients. So that's the area that people can really compete in. Okay. So while we're on the topic of chocolate, that happens to be my go-to. So that is a thing I literally crave more than anything else. And in fact, so many people who are in my community and my family know this, that I get regular packages, deliveries of chocolate, literally from around the world,

which is amazing. Amazing. What's happening there? And you write about this and you write about it when you start to introduce this concept of something you call psychobiotics. There's also something that we really haven't explored, which is what is the relationship of the gut microbiome and the things that actually live inside of us rather than us, ourselves contributing to these feelings? Because it sounds like that in my chocoholism is probably a meaningful factor too. Absolutely. Your gut bacteria are craving the chocolate.

And like I said, in that chapter, you're probably in that group that has the chocolate loving bacteria and you're not alone. There's many people in that group and it can be very healthy. As you know, cacao has many benefits. Dopamine release happens with dark chocolate. And so if you, for example, use it in a healthful way, it can actually help you get that dopamine release in a positive way. So there's lots of great things about loving chocolate, except for the new studies with, high levels of lead and cadmium in our chocolate, which you should definitely look through that because I had to. Chocolate is one of those things that our gut bacteria can

create. Our gut bacteria are probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest contributor to cravings that we don't really even understand. So psychobiotics, there's this whole world that is exploding science that says that your gut bacteria can help shape your mental health. And it came from a series of studies that were done on both depressed, schizophrenic, Alzheimer's patients. So they took schizophrenic patients, the microbiome of schizophrenic patients, and then up non-schizophrenic people. And they transplanted it into germ-free mice, mice that did not have their own microbiome. And they mixed them up and the researchers were able to tell with 100% accuracy which animals had received the schizophrenic microbiome just from the behavior

of the animals without teaching anything about their brain, without doing anything else. And so this world of psychobiotics started to stem and they did it with depressed animals, same thing, autism, dementia, Alzheimer's, I mean, you name it. And these mental health diseases get transplanted just by changing that gut bacterial colonies. And I mean, it's just mind blowing, right? The whole world of psychiatry is like blown up because this whole concept of, you know, treating the brain now is no longer valid because if you don't treat the gut, you're not going to achieve the changes that you're looking for. So that psychobiotic world is something I think is so interesting and not because I want to create the billion dollar

drug. And, you know, that's where the real interest is in the research world is like, what is this combination of, you know, bacteria that can reverse, you know, each one of these diseases? The potential is that we actually can already change some of this through ingesting bacteria, through being around people with healthy bacteria, through fecal transplants, which would be the most aggressive way to transplant bacteria. But I think this is the most interesting part of this whole thing is that our cravings, our mood, our mental capacity, even athleticism can be transplanted through these gut bacteria. Yeah. I mean, it's really such a wild concept to think that the bacteria that exists in our gut can affect so much of our psychological expression and also so many other things around wellbeing.

You mentioned a couple of different things. The notion of a fecal transplant, which a lot of people would probably hear that and say, oh, please don't talk about this anymore. It just sounds horrible. I know that for people who end up with C. diff, which is a bacterial infection, which often is really hard to treat, that fecal transplants, literally transplanting the bacteria from another person's healthy gut into that person often completely resolves something that was entirely resistant. And you imagine, is there some universe where somebody is wildly controlled by cravings or going through mental illness, or that literally transplanting the microbiome from somebody who has not experienced any of that into that person

could largely resolve that. If that universe exists, it's kind of mind-blowing and the possibilities there are incredible, I think. Yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. The possibilities are just incredible. There's already a company, I'm sure you're aware because you're up on this world that sells the microbiome of athletes, of top-level athletes. And it's literally feces pelts that you can take that contain the live bacteria from some top-level. And you know how athletics is. People

will do anything to gain an edge, like anything and everything. I mean, this is not past the things that people would do to gain athletic prowess. But I think the potential is really there. We know from our immunologic studies from babies that your microbiome is not just consistent of the food that you eat, but also the people you spend time with, the nature time you have, the interactions you have with nature and animals. And so I think that the future for us before we can just easily transplant people's bacteria from one to the other is really learn from those lessons. We already know that being around healthy people, sharing food with healthy people,

being in nature populates a gut in a way that is beneficial. We know that exercise, for example, is like, I mean, your microbiome, those microbes love when we exercise, they produce these really beautiful anti-inflammatory compounds when we exercise that give us some of that anti-long-term health benefit of exercise.

So there's a lot of potential to apply what we know about how to grow good gut bacteria to this world of psychobiotics. Yeah, it really is incredible. I mean, imagine even being able to, you know, a prescription is go walk in trees for 45 minutes a day, three days a week, and that it actually has legitimate sustained effect. And we know actually there's plenty of research that says that it affects everything from inflammatory cytokines to state of mind and mood and depression and anxiety.

But imagine if part of that, I think the mechanism people still really don't understand, imagine if part of that is actually that over time it changes the balance of the microbiome in the gut. I mean, it would be pretty incredible if that was part of the equation there. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. We've been spending a lot of time on sort of like, what are cravings? What are the contributors to it societally, individually, emotionally, like all right down to the creators that exist inside of us. Let's talk a bit about where we go from here. So like, once we kind of understand this is what's happening, this is how I'm being controlled in no small way. The question then is, okay, what now? What do we do about this? How do we flip the switch to start to say, how do I stop the cravings? Or can I stop the cravings? Or how do I swap in more health-inducing behaviors or activities that would give me the same thing that the cravings are yearning to

satisfy, but without all of the negative? And you offer sort of these five ideas or a five-step path effectively. Let's move through the five different steps here. You start by talking about, you call it replenish, and you reference something that you call the super six here. Take me into this. So we always are talking about what to take out, right? I'll take out the ultra processed foods, take out the negative dopamine triggers and all this stuff. But I don't think we get enough clarity because of all the diet wars about what things actually are good for you, despite, you know, what category of vegan paleo, you know, carnivore they fit into. And so I tried to look at the literature and say, okay, now that we know we're trying to grow a good

gut microbiome because it's communicating with the brain, it's going to help us with cravings and hunger and long-term health. What are the things that actually grow a good gut microbiome? And it came down to these six things. And some of these things are familiar to people and some of these things aren't. You know, glucosinolates, for example, you might know it as like broccoli or cauliflower. But I think that putting it in that category together with the reason for me to do that is that the glucosinolate compound is the one that helps that bacteria grow. And so you can pick any one of the things in that category. So if you, you know, are allergic to, you know,

broccoli, then you have a different option. And there's all these kale haters online. And so I said, there's a lot of glucosinolates you can choose. And so that's one of them. And one of the other ones I actually talk about in there that I think you would really love is the dopamine boosting foods, because we know that gut bacteria makes dopamine and can help us with those cravings for negative things by replacing it with foods that actually produce it with positive things. So I kind of named some of the foods that you would want to include that can help boost up that baseline dopamine level. So we're not always just trying to dive into the bag of chips or cookies. I think that is really, really important. And then there's the fermented foods. There's basically what to include without all the noise of what's the calories in this? Is this vegan? Is this pale? I just said, here, you could be anything. You can pick your food within that category and you can find something that works for

you. Yeah. I thought, I mean, seriously, you mentioned the dopamine supporting foods also, because the notion that you can eat something that will then have the bacteria in your gut to like produce dopamine. The fact that actually they produce dopamine was interesting to me also, that it doesn't actually have to come from your body's own, you know, like chemistry said, it can literally come from the critters inside of you and then move out. And then the other thing I found really interesting was the notion that the dopamine that is generated in your gut

can then move from your gut out into your body and satisfy the same craving, the same sort of like yearning that your brain, like it'll make its way up to your brain and give you what you need. Yeah. I was so confused because on one hand you hear most of the serotonin of your body, I think it's 90% is producing the gut. And most of the dopamine is also producing the gut. And, but then there was this notion of like, but that dopamine and serotonin can't get into the brain. It's like, there's a blood brain barrier, right? So what I learned was that there's this

magical communication system between the brain and the gut that happens five different ways. As of today, we know five different ways. One is through the vagus nerve. One is through secondary hormones that travel to the brain, kind of like knock on the brain and say like, hey, produce more dopamine. There's direct and neuropod cells that send the signal. So there's at least four to five, I think it's five different ways now that we know that this dopamine and serotonin communicates with the brain. And that's also why, that's where the immune system

made it clear to me what's happening with the immune system. So I think a lot of people hear this word inflammation and they're like, okay, I know that's bad, but what does that even mean? So if you take it in the context of this dopamine bacteria gut brain connection lens, it basically means that when those gut bacteria see something that they don't like or that they don't recognize or that seems dangerous, they signal to our immune system. They're like walkie-talkie into the cells and they're like, I need your help here. I don't recognize or that seems dangerous. They signal to our immune system. They're like walkie-talkie into the cells and they're like, I need your help here. I don't really know what this is. I need to heal this. It's usually a toxic substance, a foreign substance, a negative

substance. Then the body sends all of its immune cells, a little group of them, and then they decide what to communicate with the brain. They say, okay, hey brain, there's a problem down here. We are, and that's literally inflammation that's happening. And so what happens is your brain will say, all right, when it's really inflamed in your gut or somewhere else in your body, your brain will shut off the functions of your brain that are unnecessary at that time. So it's like when you watch your dog when they're sick, they're just kind of lying around, moping, they're sleeping a lot because they're giving that immune system a chance to heal. But then when we say, wow, this is happening so often with the food that we eat,

then we wonder why we're tired all the time or that we can't have the clear creative thoughts. A lot of that is coming from that inflammation that's happening in the gut that's communicated to the brain. So the replenish step is really about, it's counterintuitive in that I think a lot of people think about cravings. They're like, why do I have to stop taking it into my body? Because these are all the things that are triggering it. Let me stop doing it. And what you're saying is, no, there are these six categories of things that you actually want more of that will be really balancing to the system. Rather than thinking about deprivation, you're thinking about how do I actually focus on fueling in a way which will keep me in a place where I feel good and

less maniacally hungry all day, every day for reasons that are not in any way necessary or rational. Proactive, exactly. Yeah. You talk about the second step in the pathway you call rewiring, which is all about stopping the addiction to hunger pathways. And you use this phrase, intermittent reward scheduling. Talk to me about this. The best way to describe this is Vegas, right? You go to the gambling table and you keep losing, keep losing, keep losing. But that 17th hand is a big hand and you win the big pot, right? That is the strongest trigger for dopamine wiring. So now you want to go back for more because you got that reward and you got that big burst

of dopamine when you win, right? And you want to recreate that. So intermittent rewards are the strongest trigger for dopamine. So gambling both have that kind of, that's their advantage is that they can really offer you an intermittent reward. So when you want to start to rewire your brain, you can also use this science. So you can start to reward yourself intermittently. And the key here is not to anticipate it too much. So if you put it on your calendar without remembering, that's the best. So put it on for next week, that on Monday, Friday, and Saturday, you're going to reward yourself with a healthy treat or

whatever to rewire that brain or have someone else do it for you that's intermittent, unexpected. And then you basically, I go through kind of a three-to-one technique of how to best use that opportunity to rewire your brain. And part of it really comes down to noticing that there's something that is positive, that is giving you a good feeling, that is a better choice than the one you had before. So basically three days a week where you're, you know, intermittently rewarding yourself or you pick, you know, what, three days a month or whenever it is. And then doing some kind of cognitive behavioral therapy makes, you know,

really understanding why this was a better choice. This was why you're doing a better job because you really want to rewire that pathway. So you have to bring some consciousness to it. And that's why cognitive behavioral therapy is so great at changing behavior because you can bring your consciousness to it. You learn why you're doing it, why this is so great. And then the one is just sit down and savor it for that one minute. And it's just an exercise in kind of getting, being able to save ourselves from this world that is trying to hijack our dopamine pathways and saying like, all right, but I'm going to do this for myself with positive things. It doesn't have to be food-based. It can be a reward on your journey to publication or in your relationship

or whatever it is. It's just a way to kind of help you start to make some better choices. Yeah. So while replenishing was more about like here are positive things to add in, the rewiring part seems really like the focus is let's actually, let's get sort of aware, like let's do things that actually make us more aware and present in these behaviors and then just start to make subtle changes in them so that we can be more conscious in the activities and understand what we're doing. You talk about the importance of these natural rhythms that we have in our life. So often, and probably so many people have heard this phrase, circadian

rhythm. We all have this rhythm, which is natural to us. It's different in each person, although they're general as you can make. But the relationship between circadian rhythm and our craving cycles, I think is interesting. Circadian rhythms runs most of the, at least 75% of the processes in our brain and body. So we are intimately tied to sunlight and darkness for everything we do. And there are receptors in your eyes that go straight to your brain when you see natural light that make all these changes right away. And one of the changes I think is so fascinating is the changes that happen when you see light. There's this melanocyte stimulating hormone, a hormone that's released in your brain that actually has the power to make

you feel more satiated and makes you feel more satisfied. And intuitively, we know this, right? You go on vacation, you're taking a sunny walk or you're somewhere warm and you just don't feel like craving or eating as much junk or you're just more satisfied from life in general or whatever it is. But there's actually science behind that. So you can actually mimic that on a daily basis where you can get a release of alpha MSH in your brain that's going to help you on your journey to having a better relationship with drugs, alcohol, chocolate, whatever it may be. This is interesting, right? Because one way to do is literally just to spend more time outside or get outside as you recommend early in the morning to try and sort of like set your circadian rhythms.

But even if you live somewhere where it's dark a lot, you know, if you're in the Pacific Northwest, you have very different exposure to sunlight than you are if you're in LA or Arizona or where I am in Colorado, but you're not excluded because some of the internal, like the light therapy, the full spectrum light or blue light therapy, does that play a similar role? Yeah. It's really easy now to go onto Amazon and get something. I think you can just search happy light and you want 10,000 lux of light at 12 inches from your face. That's kind of the magic number you want to sit on under it for 20 minutes, but it has a great effect. And remember that for those people who live in the Pacific Northwest or live in a place

that's kind of overcast a lot, it's still natural light. So when you go outside, it's still brighter than it is indoors. And even though it doesn't seem like that, even on a very cloudy overcast day, it's about 10,000 lux of light. And on a sunny, bright, sunny day, that's about 100,000 lux of light. And an indoor light is like 1,000. So we're talking a fraction of what you really need to activate the circadian receptors. Yeah. Are you aware of any research that would connect light exposure to the makeup of your gut microbiome? Yeah, absolutely. Our gut bacteria need sunlight and they live in these like, in the very dark bowels in our body, but they absolutely, they have circadian rhythms and they need input.

But what they do is they get the input from us because they're not outside. So when they, they get various inputs to know when it's daytime, when it's nighttime, and they need us to get sun. They need us to be in nature. And that's an absolute way to grow the gut bacteria. So all of this science is just mind blowing because how do they have, how do they know what time it is? They have personalities, they have cravings for certain foods, they need sleep, they need sunlight. They're living beings. Yeah. It's on the one hand, amazing and a little bit terrifying at the same

time, but as long as it's a symbiotic relationship, then that's all good. The one other thing I want to ask you under this category, and maybe it might not be the right category here is the potential effect of time-restricted feeding or intermittent fasting. I know that you've spent a lot of time, you've spoken about that in a lot of different ways in the online space. I've experimented with it. It's certainly variations have been a huge buzz. Is there some relationship to time-restricted feeding or intermittent fasting and cravings and is resetting or the circadian rhythms the right category to even talk about that in? Or is it something different? In my world, yes, because I consider circadian intermittent fasting the ideal way for someone who's trying to reset their cravings,

hunger pathways, because one, we know the gut bacteria need circadian rhythms. They need sleep and rest. So taking a break from food, especially during the gut bacteria need circadian rhythms. They need sleep and rest, right? So taking a break from food, especially during the evening nighttime hours, is highly beneficial for the brain, for the digestive system, for the gut bacteria. Most people in America in the lay literature are doing it the opposite. They're eating late into the night, and then they're waking up and not eating for the first half of the day. It's not more. If you think about it, that actually goes against circadian rhythms.

Although they may have some benefits, as we know, there's some benefits, maybe weight loss, some other, just because it's controlled calories. But I think if you really are trying to do it for these reasons, to reset that mind-body connection, improve that brain-gut health, you have to incorporate it in a circadian pattern to actually help that kind of connection. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that you say that because so often when people talk about this thing of intermittent fasting, and for anyone who hasn't heard that phrase, it's generally a lot of people are talking about trying to restrict their feeding, like everything that they do to an eight or 10 hour window during the day. And most people that I've heard talk about it, just like the way you're

described say, well, I'll wake up and I'm not going to eat until noon. And then I'll eat between noon and eight. And what you're saying is maybe we should re-examine that. Maybe actually it makes sense to have breakfast and just have a lighter meal and have it much earlier in the day. And then let that be the close of the day. That might align much better with your natural rhythms, just as a human being and also with all the bacteria that helps contribute to let them function more healthily. Did I get that right? Or is there something different? There was this controversial article, a headline was something like,

intermittent fasting is going to kill you or something. And the headline was talking about a study that looked at people who only ate one meal a day, and then they had higher rates of all-cause mortality, right? So it makes sense because everyone who I've ever talked to who eats one meal a day and this was true with the study, they were unintentionally skipping meals, and then they would have a huge late-day meal and then eat all the way till they were going to bed or whatever, which fits into a lot of people's schedules. That's still called intermittent fasting, but that it was terrible for your cardiovascular system, for your hormones, and for all cause mortality. So there's a huge uproar because the title and also these people were unintentionally intermittent fasting. So there were different reasons.

Most of the people were working very difficult jobs. There's some food insecurity there. So it was a different population of people. And what were they eating when they broke their fast? Obviously, all that matters. So it wasn't a great study, but it just implies what we already intuitively know through circadian rhythm research is that you are supposed to be eating at certain times of the day. Because even if we're working a night shift,

every time we get light input into our eyes, our brain resets today. And so we're not nocturnal animals. You cannot switch your body's functions to become nocturnal, no matter how much you try. So your insulin, your pancreatic enzymes, your digestive hormones, they all kind of get to very, very low baseline levels after about eight o'clock for most people. And so that is a nice way to say, hey, curb that nighttime eating and watch, do a circadian intermittent fast where you maybe stop eating at seven o'clock or, and then just do 12, 14, 15 hours. And so you're not just rolling out of bed at 6am and having your first orange juice and bar, you're waiting for an hour or two.

And that's really, that's all it takes to do overnight circadian fast. Yeah. I mean, it is so interesting because that is counter to the way that so many of us live our lives. And especially, you know, you and I both lived in New York city for a long time where the notion of eating dinner before seven or eight at night, often like you just didn't do it. Like you ate dinner almost right before you went to bed. And when in hindsight, you know, when you live in a culture and all of your friends and like all of your colleagues follow that same pattern,

there's a social cost to opting out of that. That I think sometimes we don't honor. Like you're making a conscious decision, not just to do things that may be better for your health and your wellbeing, but, you know, that may also have people around you raising their eyebrows and saying like, why aren't you coming out to dinner with us at nine o'clock at night or doing this? And those are all things that we have to navigate and figure out like how important is this

to us, I think, and make those sometimes tough decisions. Yeah. And it's always a balance, right? Being social and being around people that are positive is great for your microbiome. It's great for your brain. It's great. So you really definitely have to balance the health benefits with the social benefits. And most people, I would say, can compromise and maybe do a Saturday, weekend nights or late dinner, but then go back to their earlier

dinners on weekdays. It's like a nice compromise, I think. Yeah. So flowing from the idea of the fact that we all have rhythms, you talk about sleep also and the importance of sleep and the relationship between sleep and cravings. And I would have to imagine that anyone who has ever slept horribly, woken up the next day and ravenously for like anything that they could put in their mouths to make them feel better. And again, I'm raising my hand here. Like we get that connection, but what's actually happening there? It's such a great way to describe it because we've all been there, right?

I had two little kids and I was stressed with medical training. And I remember that all I wanted to do was snack. And when you actually look at hunger hormone levels, they're altered in people who have, uh, been sleep deprived. So your level of ghrelin, the hunger hormone is much higher and your level of leptin, which is your, of satisfaction, is much lower. And same thing with CCK, neuropeptide Y. This is a phenomenon that actually is happening. It's not just in your head. I used to think that I was tired and I wanted sugar and caffeine to kind of wake me up, which is partially the story. But this is saying like, no, it's actually your hormones

that are flowing through that are telling you you're hungrier than you are and that the leptin levels are much lower than they need to be. So there's kind of a double whammy there. Yeah. So sleep deprivation literally alters your hormone levels in a way that makes you think that you're much hungrier than your actual needs would suggest at that moment. Right. Which just makes you think, okay, I need to elevate my attention to sleep here. And you have a whole bunch of suggestions as well. And the last thing that you talk about is this notion of retraining, and this brings in movement exercise. And I think so many of us have heard exercise floated

increasingly as sort of, you know, this is the most powerful, quote, medicine for almost everything that ails us in some meaningful way. And again, of course, acknowledging that every individual has different levels of access to different ways of moving their body and possibilities and limitations. So we acknowledge that. And at the same time, the research around exercise is powerful and you make an interesting connection between exercise, hunger, and cravings as well.

Absolutely. Exercise is your best probiotic, your best craving controller, you know, supplement. It is your best mood booster, as you know. And I think it's shown through the studies about the effects of exercise on the brain are countless. What we didn't realize is how much the exercise actually even affects your cravings and your hunger. And I think that we think of it intuitively as like exercise is good for your body, but we don't often realize that it's actually taming those hunger hormones, or that's actually helping us in this path to understanding and controlling our cravings in a positive way. And we get a dopamine burst with exercise. So not only are we producing more satiation and less of the hunger craving hormones, but we're also creating these chemicals in our brain and our

gut that are making us feel better. And so when I read the research on cravings and hunger, and then how it affects the gut bacteria, like boost your mood and how it's just a no brainer. It's the best probiotic, best mood booster, the best cravings buster or whatever. Every different form has been studied. You know, people argue, oh, it's weight training. No, it's, you know, it's walking. No, it's this.

I just say any exercise you can do is the best exercise and don't discount walking. A lot of what I do is walking and hiking. And it is a little counterintuitive because you think, well, if I go out for an hour and a half, a two hour hike in the mountains and I come back, I should be ravenous. I've just, you know, in theory burned a ton of calories. And often I'm not hungry at all. Even if I was kind of hungry before I left and I come back and I'm kind of like, but shouldn't my body be craving something? And there's something that was reset. And it's sometimes a signal to me that what was happening before I went out for a walk or a hike is that I

was overwhelmed or I was tired or I was stressed. And something got shifted when I moved my body that released that feeling and made me realize when I came back, it actually, it wasn't a biological need for sustenance. It was just, I was trying to deal with something else that was going on by effectively medicating it with a dopamine hit, whatever it is. And for some reason, the exercise dissipated that need. And I came back and I just felt really good. In fact, often I am substantially less hungry after I exercise, at least for sort of like a window of time. Then of course I'm going to eat. That's what the research says. It's going to calm your cravings and hunger and, you know, high intensity exercise, nature-based

exercise. There's all these different versions of exercise that has been shown to help it. So I say to people, like, find the exercise that gives you the results that you want. Like you said, walking and going for hikes is a great way to lower cortisol and to increase that dopamine and serotonin naturally. I also love nature-based exercise because I think it has a double effect of sunlight, circadian rhythms, but then also that mood boosting effect of just being in nature, as well as the mood boosting effects of moving your body, which almost like a multitasking thing when you do it outdoors.

Yeah, I'm right there with you. I love that you're looking at this thing that so many people experience. A lot of people don't talk about it because I feel like there's also a certain amount of shame that we sometimes experience around cravings, around hunger that we label we shouldn't be feeling or experiencing. And we shame ourselves for saying for our supposed inability to make rational, intelligent, health-supporting choices. So we don't want to talk about it. And then in not talking about it, we also never really understand what's happening.

And I love the fact that you sort of said, let's just take this on. Let's deep dive into it. And based on also a really long and rich medical career and diving into this and saying, let's really understand what's happening here. Let's create a resource for people to understand that. And then a whole bunch of, here are things that you can do. And no matter where you're coming from and take little steps and ease your way into all these different things. So I love that we're able to talk about this in just like an open way,

because I think a lot of people just don't because of this layer of shame that gets wrapped around it and not realizing they're circumstantial, there's internal, there's environmental, there's psychological things that all fold into it. So. I don't know about you, but when you read this, at least for me when I was writing it, it just opened the conversation for me with myself about all of the cravings and hunger. And it's so much more. Honestly, I say on social media all the time, it's like, we have the power to save ourselves because I think that if you understand your mind-body connection, then you can be the one

to save yourself rather than waiting for some doctor pill device solution to come around. Yeah. I love that. And it also, it gives you a sense of agency, which I think so many of us have felt like we have been lacking, especially over the last few years. So it feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation. So in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Well, in the spirit of our conversation, to live a good life, you have to learn how to save yourself. Thank you.

Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Aviva Ram about how to work with our hormones to live better lives. You'll find a link to Aviva's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead chances are you did since you're still listening here. Would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person. Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better

together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen. Then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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