Good Life Project - Paleo For Mortals, One Size Does Not Fit All – With Chris Kresser

Episode Date: January 22, 2015

Chris Kresser is a leading voice in functional and integrative medicine and a New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Cure. He maintains a wildly popular, research-driven website and a clinical practice in Berkeley, CA that has been largely closed to new clients for the last 3 years, because he just can't handle the demand.He's also a bit of a raging introvert, a total science nerd, research fanatic and a humble guy. Chris loves to go deep down the science rabbit hole. And he loves to be with, and make a real difference in the lives of the people he serves.Funny thing is, none of this was ever supposed to happen...CChris' entire career was triggered by an intractable illness caught in a small surfing village in Indonesia, during what was supposed to be a year-long surf safari.That led to a 10 year, brutal health odyssey, where he traveled the world to seek the help of more than 30 different doctors, tried every one-size-fits-all approach to diet, a mountain of meds, amassed what he now calls his supplement graveyard, all in vain. Until, finally, he decided to take matters into his own hands, start to listen to his own body, do his own research and learn to heal himself.As he began to make progress, he decided to return to school to train in the field that has now become his vocation.This week's episode takes us deeper into Chris' journey, his recovery and how it became his vocation. We also talk about his book and how, oddly enough, it may have been misnamed and have less to do with paleo than the title implies. And we talk about some incredibly exciting developments in the next wave of medicine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I had days where I'd be basically just curled up in a ball and pain on the floor and you know not knowing what to do or how to make it better. I you know I was I was in my 20s I was like supposed to be the time where you're you know stepping into your career and finding a partner and all that stuff. And I was just wrecked. Today's episode features a friend of mine, Chris Kresser, who's a leading voice in functional medicine and nutrition as a source of vitality and fuel and reclaiming health and energy and, uh, and really exploring lifestyle, um, as a powerful solution to, um, much of what ails us, um, which is kind of

ironic in that we actually recorded this conversation in his house in the Berkeley Hills in Northern California. And, um, at the time of recording it, I was actually, I could barely hear out of one ear. I had just flown in, had major ear and throat problems actually. And then we lost the microphone on my mic. And so you'll notice when you listen, when you hear his voice sounds great, but my voice actually had to be pulled from his mic and sounds a little bit distorted. So I apologize for that. We would actually have re-recorded all my sections and edited them in. But as you can hear, I'm still kind of struggling with this.

And I wanted to not wait and get this conversation out to you. It's wide-ranging. It tracks Chris's extraordinary personal journey, a 10-year journey from extremely bad health to exceptional health, and how he became a provider and a leading voice in the field, how he built an extraordinary and packed business. In fact, he has pretty much closed his practice to new patients for the better part of three years now. And then we really explore some of the big emerging provocative issues in medicine these days and the good, the bad, the ugly. So I hope you enjoy this conversation

and I'm turning it over to Chris now. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. 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 are later required. 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 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.

In high school I was interested in health, but mainly as an athlete. You know, how nutrition could improve my performance and that was about it. And then after I graduated from UC Berkeley, I took off to see the world. And I'm a lifelong surferfer so I decided to bring my surf boards and do a kind of surf safari. Yeah around the world surf trip and Indonesia is a big mecca for that so that was one of the first stops on the tour and I was living on a little island called Zimbabwe. I'm staying in a little village where there's a pretty well-known surf spot and I got extremely sick.

You know, the classic tropical illness that you hear about, vomiting, diarrhea, delirium, fever. There's like a three- or four-day chunk of time where I don't really remember anything, just, you know, complete blackout. And fortunately, there was an Australian guy that was also there in the village that had some antibiotics that he gave to me and kind of brought me back from the brink. And I continued to travel for several months after that.

And then, you know, although I had recovered from the initial issue, it became clear that my health was continuing to decline. So, you know, after about a year on the road, I decided to come back and try to figure out what was going on. And I, you know, just first went to my local doctor and he didn't have a clue what was going on, but he thought it could be a parasite. So he gave me some antibiotics and I took them and felt a little bit better for a while and then worse. And this started like this crazy journey where I saw probably 30 different doctors all around the country. I even flew to a couple of different countries to see specialists in tropical infectious disease. You know, I took all kinds of different prescription medications. I took thousands of dollars worth of supplements. I have a cupboard that I call my supplement graveyard,

which is just, you know, full of pills that I took that didn't work. I saw, as I said, all kinds of specialists in conventional medicine. But I also, you know, when that wasn't helping, I went to the other end of the spectrum and I saw everything from, you know, specialists in Chinese medicine to naturopathy, to homeopathy, to shamans, energy healers. I mean, I basically did everything I possibly could to try to recover my health. And this really kind of extended over about a 10-year period. And it was pretty rough, you know, to be honest. There were times where I didn't know if I was going to make it. I was not able to work for a several-year period during that time.

I had days where I'd be basically just curled up in a ball in pain on the floor and, you know, not knowing what to do or how to make it better. I, you know, I was, I was in my twenties. I was, it's like supposed to be the time where you're, you know, stepping into your career and, and, and, and, you know, uh, finding a partner and all that stuff. And I was just wrecked and it was pretty scary and pretty terrifying at that point. Um, not really knowing if I had a future or what that future was going to look like, if I would even be able to support myself at all and just incredibly frustrating to not

be able to find help, you know, And it definitely was not for lack of trying. So at some point along the way, I was introduced to this concept of a nutrient-dense diet. And initially it was more along the lines of Weston A. Price, which is a philosophy on nutrition. I hadn't heard about paleo. I didn't know anything about it. And I started eating that way. And then I did my own tweaking. I found out the grains and legumes didn't really work for me, no matter how they were prepared. And I ended up on a sort of paleo diet without even really knowing it, my own modified version of it. And that's when I really started to turn the corner. Things really started to improve for me.

It certainly wasn't the only thing that brought me back to health. There were a lot of different things that I did to recover, but it was a big step in the process. And eventually I got back to the point where I felt like I could reenter the world, so to speak. And I studied, decided to go back to school and formalize some of the learning that I had done in that 10-year process to recover my own health. Because what was happening is people were asking me, you know, questions like, how did you figure it out? What are you doing? Like, how can I, you out what are you doing like how can I you know can

you help me and and so I thought you know I don't believe that everything happens for a reason but I do believe that we have the opportunity to learn from whatever does happen and turn it into a positive life-affirming experience or not so I look back on my experience that I'd had and I thought, how can I use this in a way that will not only further my own healing and growth as a person, but also support other people in that process. So I considered medical school. I actually even got as far as enrolling in a post-bac pre-med program. But then I went around and interviewed. I thought, maybe I should just talk to doctors before I decide to take this leap, because it's a big leap, right?

So I interviewed 10 different doctors and asked them how they liked their job. And 10 out of 10 said that they wouldn't become a doctor again if they had the choice. Maybe that was just the sample size the doctors I spoke with but what I realized not just through that but through thinking about it more was that I could probably have a bigger impact and and like practice in the way that I wanted to if I studied a non-conventional form of medicine so I went back to school to study Chinese and integrative medicine here in Berkeley and got my degree. And during school, I started a blog called The Healthy Skeptic just to keep track of my own research, really. I didn't have any concept that anybody else would read it. It was quite a shock when I saw the first comment. This was probably

seven or eight years ago, I guess. And yeah, somebody left a comment. I was like, oh, how did you find this? And one thing led to another. And by the time I graduated from school, I had a fairly big number of readers and opened my practice. And because of that exposure, it filled up pretty quickly and um one thing led to another and here i am so you're so your original i guess you're you know you've got the informal training which is 10 years of experimentation yourself and trying to figure out the intersection between traditional medicine chinese medicine functional medicine nutrition and where this all fits together, and then the formal journey in Chinese medicine.

It's interesting that when I think of you, and when I read you now, and I read you regularly, you have this really interesting lens, which I think is part of what makes you appeal to so many people, which is everything is informed by what makes you appeal to so many people which is um everything is informed by an astonishing depth of science of not just chinese medicine science but you know like everything is like let let me see what the science is telling us is there published peer-reviewed research that backs up any of these claims. So you clearly have something which is driving you really to go much deeper into that side. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think I

really am a researcher at heart. I mean, that's something that really interests me and I thrive on and I really enjoy the experience of investigating something deeply and especially finding something new or making new connections that haven't been made or challenging common myths, which is really how I got my start. The blog name, The Healthy Skeptic, is really all about that. And as I said, my first instinct was to study conventional medicine. I mean, I love science. And, you know, I listen to Science Friday. I read science books all the time. I'm just a science nerd. I totally love it. And so in a way, it's a surprise that I ended up studying Chinese medicine, because there are a lot of aspects of Chinese medicine that are non-scientific. I'm doing air quotes here, at least according to the way that we understand

science now in the West. But I think what drew me to Chinese medicine was the holistic view of the body and their understanding, which I think still surpasses our own, that the body is more than just the sum of its parts. And that provided, that still informs all of the research that I do. In fact, I just recorded a podcast with Rob Wolf this morning, and we were talking about, you know, there's all these studies recently that suggest this new, this sugar called new 5-GC in red meat is, causes inflammation, is going to give you cancer. And, you. And in the West, we have the tendency to break things down in a really reductionist way and look at single compounds and molecules and how they affect things. The Chinese would say that's ridiculous. You don't eat single

reduced compounds, you eat whole foods. And so we need to look at the effects of the food. So I think that perspective is what I appreciate about Chinese medicine. But you're right, I'm passionate about the research. And in California, when you study Chinese medicine, you methodology, which was one of my favorite classes, because we're considered to be primary care providers in the workers' comp system here. We have to know how to understand that whole side of things. So I did get formal education in those subjects as well yeah it's yeah when you look at just the lens that you bring to everything um it's really uh it's it's broad but i think also the thing that's really powerful about um your work is it's it's real world you know and and i think one of the big frustrations for a lot of people these days is you know once you sort of reach a certain point in life, almost everybody's living with some level of chronic pain, chronic inflammation, chronic something. And it's like that, you know, chronic descriptor that, you know, followed by symptomology that it seems increasingly like traditional medicine is having trouble figuring out.

And, you know, so I guess functional medicine and nutrition are becoming this really huge thing. But bundled with that, I think we're seeing also the rise of a lot of big claims and a lot of almost hysteria and elevated. This is the solution. Yeah. lot of almost hysteria and elevated this is this yeah um and i think what's so appealing at least to me about your lens is that it's kind of like it's you're not telling people here's the one system that's going to fix everybody in fact it's the exact opposite well here's the thing i learned that in a very you know firsthand way through my own experience. I got very excited about those proclamations, you know, when I encountered them. Oh, it's a low-carb diet. That's the solution. That's what's going to fix me. And then I, you know, earnestly started the low-carb diet and

find out that it's a terrible idea for me. Or it's the macrobiotic diet. If I just, you know, remove animal products from my diet and eat this balanced macrobiotic way, that's going to do it. Did that wrecked me. You know, I did a vegan diet. I did a raw diet. I did all of those extreme kind of dogmatic interpretations and they all failed me. And what I learned painfully and painstakingly is that you really have to learn to listen to your own body and learn to give it what it needs in each moment. And so I've often said there's no one-size-fits-all approach to diet. And by that, I mean we all have different genetics, different genes, different gene expression, different lifestyles, different goals, different health status.

And all of those influence what make an optimal diet for each of us. But even for me or for you, what's optimal isn't going to stay the same for our entire life. You know, what was perfect for you at 25 might not be perfect for you at 50. And so what I really want to teach people is how to develop an ability to adapt, essentially, because that's what we're talking about. You know, we're talking about our ability to adapt to our circumstances and thrive as our circumstances change and evolve. And you can't do that with like a really rigid, dogmatic idea. father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. 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 8 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. Mayday, mayday. We've been 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. Yeah. Okay, so let's throw this out there then. I look at you as the guy who's about

individualization. And when I first read your book, The Personal Paleo Code, it was to me, it was to me it it was really powerful

because it basically said that it said you know here's a framework within which you can run your own experiments to see what's most intelligent here's some big ideas that you know and some common like for an X percent of the population

this is probably intelligent thing in here. But customize it. But at the same time, and we've talked about this, you know, personally a little bit. The name of the book has this big, bold proclamation like paleo in it right now. And paleo is this hot thing, you know, in the market right now. And there's some really people who say this is the way to do paleo. Like, boom, this is the paleo is this hot thing you know in the market right now and there's some really people when you know who say this is the way to do paleo like boom this is the paleo diet this is the approach living not to me that yeah not me right yeah um i don't know if i made the right decision with that

frankly um when i look back at it i i, there was a big discussion before we named the book. Um, we waffled back and forth. Um, it was never, it was never 100% certain that the word paleo would be in the title. Um, I think what paleo is for me is, is a convenient label. And, um, you know, I could say ancestral nutrient-based, nutrient-dense, you know, low-toxin real foods diet, and about 0.001% of the population will have any clue what I'm talking about when I say that. I say paleo, still a low percentage of the population really understands what that means, but at least it's some kind of doorway or entry point or or way that it can easily kind of reach out and

connect with people who have that understanding and ultimately i think that's why i chose to use that word in the title the downside of that is as you pointed out there is a there is a a subsection which i think is getting smaller in the paleo world, that is very dogmatic about what paleo is and should be. And believe me, I'm well aware of that because they always, you know, criticize me when I say, hey, the research suggests that legumes actually may not be as bad as a lot of paleo advocates have been letting on. And in fact, there might be some good reasons to eat them as long as you follow these guidelines for how to prepare.

I hear about it, believe me, from the paleo advocates. And I've been, yeah, I'm not, Chris Kresser's not paleo. Yeah, I'm not in that strict sense of the word. And the other downside is that people have some baggage now around that term. I think instead of opening doors, it actually closes them. So if you mentioned paleo to one person, that's an instant kind of connection and opening. If you mention it to another person, that's like an instant shutdown and disconnect so if i had to go back and do it over again at this point i'm still not sure what i would do but i would certainly strongly entertain not using that word in the title all right so let me let me

push this one step further sure just because i mean also it's interesting to me cause we're both authors. And one of the things that we always struggle with is how to title a book. You know, on the one hand you want it to, you want it to succeed because if you know that what's inside of it is really going to make a difference for people, you want it to have the greatest audience possible. On the other hand, you're thinking, okay, but it needs to be coherent with my brand and

what i believe um so the paperback is it's just out now yeah and and interestingly which doesn't happen all that often you shifted the name a bit tell me a little bit about what's behind that change so the new title is the paleo cure um we went through the same kind of process that we went through when we were talking about the the hardcover um i think the reason we decided to rebrand it in general is that the original title was was um a little bit too abstract for people um what we tried to do with the original title is use the word paleo but still convey the person, you know, my emphasis on personalization. So it's called your meaning for you, not for anybody else, but for you personal, personalized to your needs,

paleo, that's obvious. And then code was meant to apply that it's not just about diet. It's also about sleep, stress management, paleo lifestyle stuff. That's a lot of words. It's a lot of kind of interpretations. And I don't think people necessarily got that. And I also don't think that they really got what the benefit of that is supposed to be. And with the book title, the title of the book is basically a marketing decision for the most part,

because it's what's going to attract people to pick it up and open it in the first place and then you know the inside of what's in the book determines how whether it's going to be helpful to them um so as a as a clinician and someone who works with people every day i see miraculous changes with paleo diet and lifestyle and some of the functional medicine stuff that we do and the cure word is a is a provocative word and there's a lot of you know there's a whole nother discussion we could have about that but i do see people completely reversing conditions that they were told would not be, you know, able to be reversed and the decision was that we would that's the hook you know to get people interested and then once they read the book it will be clear that i'm not advocating a one-size-fits-all dogmatic approach so was it the right decision i don't know but it's

the one i mean it's always so interesting you look at some of the biggest books that have come out like the four-hour work week right and and you know the title has a huge amount to do with it but fundamentally like i'd love to believe that you know it's it's it's not gonna succeed if what's in it is not really mattering yeah that's what it comes down to but um but i want to move beyond that because um since i have you here and you are just this, you're not only a font of information because you are a clinician too and you spend time working with clients and patients. And at the same time, you're this immense research geek. What is, what's really exciting you right now in the world of wellness, health, lifestyle? What's like lighting you up and seeing like these are really fascinating paths to explore?

I think personalized medicine is really what's exciting me the most. And it's interesting because, you know, my book was all about personalized nutrition, but I think we're now just starting to enter the area of a fully personalized treatment model, where in addition to getting dietary recommendations that supplement recommendations based on your genes, your gene expression, and several other factors that are unique for each of us. And, you know, I think we have a long way to go there, but I think within our lifetimes, definitely within the next 10 to 20 years, we're going to see huge strides in that. So I think we're going to move away from this paradigm of, you know, there's, there's one approach for each condition. There's one diet for that will work for everybody. And, you know, in 10 years, it's not going to be a foreign concept at all that

the diet your doctor might recommend and the treatment approach your doctor might recommend, even if you have the exact same health condition, might be different than, you know, someone else with that same condition based on your genes and background and several other factors. So on the flip side, I think things have gotten a little bit out of hand with some of the genetic testing and the way that people are using that and trying to, you know, like make supplement recommendations or specific recommendations simply based on their genetic profile without looking at any other information. Talk to me more about this, because one of the things that's happened in the last couple of years, really, is just that, you know, when we first heard about gene sequencing, you know, supercomputers and zillions of dollars to do one person. Right. And now, you know, with 23B, even though there's legal wranglings around privacy issues, the

cost is around 99 bucks. Yeah. Pretty quickly. Yeah. So take me a is really... 99 bucks. Yeah. Pretty quickly. Yeah. So take me a little bit deeper into this. Yeah. So here's what concerns me about that. So for 99 bucks, you can get access to the raw genetic...

You still can get access to the raw genetic code. What 23andMe isn't doing anymore is giving you health interpretation of that data. But there are other ways that you can get that. So there are these services now where they will, you know, for a fee, plug in your raw genetic data from 23andMe and give you, you know, spit back some of your genetics that affect certain aspects of your health, and then make supplement or nutrition recommendations based on those genetic mutations alone.

And I'm not asking you any questions about your health status or anything else. It's just purely based on genes. The problem with that approach is that there's a saying, the genes load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. And what that suggests is that when you have a mutation of a gene, it changes the shape of the enzyme that that gene makes. And then that enzyme is likely less able to function optimally. But it doesn't necessarily imply that that's going to be completely broken or that you're even going to have any dysfunction at all. There are a lot of genetic mutations that are very common that don't seem to affect anybody in terms of how well they do.

And I think most people who are working in this field would agree that in the majority of cases, environment, so diet, sleep, stress management, all that stuff has a far greater impact on how you actually feel on a daily basis than the genes. So I'm nervous about this trend that I see, and I see it like my patients, new patients come to me, they have these long reports, they're taking like 40 different supplements based on the output of these reports alone, and I think that's dangerous, frankly. On the other hand, I use that data in my treatment. So I will ask patients to get their genetic profile done. And there are certain aspects of health where I think we know enough to use some of that data in a smart way. But it always has to be considered in the context of everything else. The patient's diet, their digestive function, their sleep, you know, everything else goes into my decision of

what I'm going to do about that mutation. It cannot be done just by a computer-generated report. So I think with any other new technology, you know, it's introduced, we all get really excited about it, and we abuse it in ways that it shouldn't be abused, and eventually we'll get there. But we're kind of in the Wild West frontier of that, I think. Yeah, and there's the concept also of epigenetics and whether you can identify your genetics know, if you can identify, you know, your genetics, is it expressed or not? Yeah. Is it turned on or is it turned off? So it's like you can look at it, and like you said, you know,

like in terms of, you know, like loading the gun, you know, environment, behavior, nutrition dramatically alter the expression. Yeah. And here's how we know that. Our genes have not changed very much in the past 150 or 200 years, but the incidence of all kinds of chronic inflammatory diseases has gone through the roof. So we know without equivocation that that's not genetic in origin. It's epigeneticetic it's the way that changes in our modern diet and lifestyle have activated or silenced that same genetic template that that

that you know our grandparents and great-grandparents had and that's that's fairly obvious you know when you put it that way and think about that but unfortunately it gets lost in this discussion usually yeah um so integrating or personalized medicine you know the term that you especially bring genetics and i guess over time really understanding how to how to rely on them and how to integrate them into a broader prescription protocol is one thing that's exciting what else is when you look at the horizon of what's going on in medicine whether it's nutrition or anything else what else is jasmine right now yeah i think it's it's um the ascendance maybe of functional medicine and and an ancestral perspective merged together i think you know when i think about what's the most effective uh approach to take it's it's two things, and I'll explain what I mean for

listeners who aren't familiar with those terms. Functional medicine, the way it's different than conventional medicine is, and these are generalizations, there are exceptions, but conventional medicine is basically focused on disease management and symptom suppression. So if you go to the doctor and you have high blood pressure, you'll generally get a pill that will lower your blood pressure. If you go to the doctor and you have high cholesterol, you get a pill that lowers your cholesterol. And there's rarely any investigation into why your blood pressure

or cholesterol were high in the first place. You go to a functional medicine specialist, if you have high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the first thing they You go to a functional medicine specialist. If you have high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the first thing they're going to ask is, why do you have those conditions? And it turns out there are lots of different reasons why you could have those. You could, you know, for high cholesterol, there are things like poor thyroid function, intestinal permeability, or leaky gut. They can lead to high cholesterol. And for example, I've been able to bring people's cholesterol down into a normal range just by addressing their gut

health without doing anything else, without any medication and even really any cholesterol lowering diet recommendations. So to use an analogy, if you have like a pebble in your shoe and your foot hurts, you could take Advil and it will probably feel better. And that's the typical conventional approach. Or you can take the pebble out of the shoe and that's the functional medicine approach. So functional medicine is great, but the ancestral perspective makes it even more powerful. And what that means is that, as we've been discussing, all organisms are adapted to survive and thrive in a particular environment. And when that environment changes faster than the organism can adapt,

there's a mismatch that occurs. And that's a basic concept of evolutionary biology. And we're not special. We don't get to escape that fundamental rule. And when you look at what's happened with humans, we've had this just explosion of human culture and evolution and things have gone so fast and they just continue to go faster. And our genes are not, you know, have not kept up with that, basically. We haven't learned to extract nutrients from Big Gulps and Twinkies and Cheese Doodles, probably because there aren't any nutrients in those foods. And so we never will learn to extract those,

but we haven't learned to turn what is in those foods into fuel that we can actually use in our bodies. So when you look at things through an ancestral lens, what that just means is it's a recognition that there is a certain diet and lifestyle that we're kind of hardwired for. And then we stray too far from that, that's when we get into trouble. And so combining that perspective and lens with functional medicine leads to just incredible results in the clinic. And what's exciting to me now is that's being recognized even in a conventional setting. So Mark Hyman, a colleague and friend of both of ours,

has just agreed to start the Center for Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, which is, of course, one of the most prestigious medical institutions in the world. And with that level of exposure and money behind it to support research, they're going to be doing studies on functional medicine, developing treatment protocols, et cetera, that's when it really has the potential to be a paradigm shift. Because right now, unfortunately, functional medicine is really only available to, you know, upper middle class, upper middle class and wealthy people because it's all out of pocket. And it's really not going to be able to penetrate and affect the vast majority of the population until it becomes part of the managed care system.

And that really hasn't been the battle that I've been fighting personally, but it's one that I want to become more involved in. And I really applaud Mark and his efforts. And I think that, again, within our lifetimes, we're going to see that happening because what insurance companies are going to realize, you know, they're profit motivated, but that's fine because what they'll find out is if a patient comes in with, you know, pre-diabetes and they follow a paleo type of diet and lifestyle with some smart supplementation, they're going to go from being pre-diabetic to not being pre-diabetic. And the insurance company is going to save thousands and thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of that patient.

And, you know, that's a win-win. They're happy with that. Our health care system will be able to take a step back from the course of destruction that it's on now. And it's certainly a better model for patients. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe. Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations.

What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.

Mayday, mayday. We've been 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. 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 8 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's interesting too because you brought up cholesterol, which is an interesting sort of touch point right now.

I know you recently wrote about cholesterol also, and there's a lot of mythology around it. And very recently, there was sort of like a new set of strong guidelines issued for physicians practicing traditionally about when they're essentially required from the way I understand it to prescribe statins to lower cholesterol. Talk to me about this whole. Okay. So this is the flip side of my excitement. You know, like there seems to me about this whole okay so this is the flip side of my excitement you know like there seems to be like this bifurcation that's happening where like on the one hand there's a tremendous increase in awareness about all functional medicine and and and and and we see more and more you know there are plenty of studies in the literature

now that have conclusively shown that dietary cholesterol is not a big issue. Cholesterol levels in the blood are not necessarily the primary risk factor for heart disease. When statins are effective, which is a lot less often than people realize, they are probably not effective because they lower cholesterol. They're effective because of their, what are called pleiotropic effects and, you know, non-cholesterol lowering effects like reducing inflammation. And yet, on the other hand, you see almost like a deeper entrenchment into the old paradigm. It's, it's, it's like a polarization where, you know, like both sides are just kind of digging in. And it's hard to explain, to be honest, because when you look at the scientific literature over the past 10 years, the only conclusion that you can come to is that the evidence linking cholesterol to heart disease and saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet to

increase blood cholesterol levels is weak at best and getting weaker, you know, with each new study that's published. But unfortunately, there seems to be, and this has always been the case as far as I can tell, about a 10 or 20 year gap between what you see in the scientific literature and public policy. So it's like the public policy now is being modeled on research that's decades old. And maybe in another 10 or 20 years, the public policy will start to reflect the research that we have available to us now. Yeah, which is somewhat horrifying. It is because, you know, there's been a lot of really good work done and a lot of reason to doubt these kinds of guidelines. But the truth of the matter is most people, you know, I have a large blog audience, but it's not, you know, 350 million or 400 million it's not there are a lot of people that aren't don't have the time or inclination to read this stuff and the only kind of education that they're going to get about what's good for them uh is coming from their doctor or you know mainstream publications yeah and um i guess one of one of the good news is though is that there are now voices like you out there in the world gaining.

And so people, whereas now there's sort of like direct access to all sorts of information about, you know, OK, I can hear my symptoms, you know, like what drug should I be taking? You know, simultaneously, somebody can go online and say you know like what are the alternative approaches that I can explore and come up with names like you and other leading names in functional medicine and central health and things like that um so you don't have to rely as much on that one trusted voice you may have been your family physician for decades yeah to be sort of like you have the sole voice of reason um you know one of the things that i find interesting too and i'm sure you've had these conversations with um i've talked to a lot of physicians who've been practicing for decades traditionally trained and traditionally practicing

now yeah who are becoming um really frustrated yeah with the practice and feel bound to practice in a way that they don't want to practice anymore and they're actually leaving yeah their profession not because they don't want to practice anymore but because they're having trouble practicing in the way that sort of like the guidelines for professional practice are binding yeah i'm curious whether is that just an outlier of conversation that I've had? Or is this a bigger phenomenon? That's a huge problem. I have a lot of, we did a survey a while back and found that 25% of my audience identifies as a healthcare practitioner of some kind. A lot of doctors, I get emails frequently from doctors. I have a lot

of doctors as patients. So I have a lot of these conversations with them as well. And what I've found is exactly what you have. There's a growing awareness within the medical community as well, and probably even more so than the general public, that the current model is broken. And they know better than anyone else that just prescribing somebody a drug and seeing them in a few weeks without making any other changes is not really good medicine. But as you said before, there are certain standards of practice. So if a patient has this level of cholesterol, the standard of practice is to prescribe a statin in that situation. And in some cases, doctors can be liable if they don't, which could be

anything from censure to potentially losing their medical license. And so it's a big problem. And I think doctors are as much victims of the system as patients are, because if you work in a managed care environment that, you know, dictates how much time you spend with patients and is mostly concerned with efficiency and patient volume instead of actual patient care, even if you decide, hey, I don't want to practice this way. I want to do functional medicine. I want to start using nutrition and all that. It's really difficult to do it in that managed care environment. And you would basically have to leave that environment and start your own practice which comes with its own set of challenges and you know you basically become

an entrepreneur at that point in addition to being a physician and not everybody is interested in that or even really cut out for that so I don't know what the solution is to that particular part of the problem in terms of giving people the knowledge that they need to practice differently. That's something that I'm very interested in. And in the next few years, I'm going to be doing a lot more training of other clinicians because it's clear to me that that's how that's what's needed the most and that's how i can have the biggest impact um i regularly get emails probably two or three a day from people saying where can i find a practitioner that you know approaches things in this similar way and unfortunately there just aren't that many that i can recommend. I mean, there are definitely people out there,

but there aren't enough to serve the demand. So how deep into that are you right now? Pretty deep. I think we're going to launch the first module this year. So it's a combination of functional medicine and ancestral perspective, and we're going to start with this concept called the exposome, which is a new word, geeky science word. But I really like what it conveys. It basically describes the sum total of all environmental exposures that we have through a lifetime, starting before we're even

born. So like what we experience in utero, our mother's diet in utero, and even at the time of conception, our father's diet at the time of conception, which we know now affects our own health, which is crazy to think about and important to think about if you're planning to have kids. The birth process, whether we're breastfed or, you know, whether we're born vaginally or by a C-section, whether we're breastfed or given formula, and then all of the other diet, lifestyle things that we experience. And really, when it comes down to it, the exposome, all of those experiences are the primary determinant of our health. And so that's the first place that this training program is going to start. And then we'll evolve, you know, we'll go out from there to do more of the functional medicine stuff.

But it's, it's what I'm really focused on right now. Okay. So if the exposome is the primary determinant of our health, that's not fatalistic though. We can, we can do all modulate is all modifiable, not necessarily by us. So like when you're in utero, obviously you're not able to modify that, but your parents can modify that, right? But everything else in the exposome is modifiable. Those are all modifiable risk factors. So that's extremely good news because it means that we're in primary control of our health. Where genetics play a role

is how the exposome interacts with our genes and our gene expression. And the exposome is what drives the expression of the genetic code that we come in with. So we have like this basic genetic template that we're born with and already in utero, those genes start expressing in different ways based on how they're interacting with the exosome. So that determines why you take two people who have the identical lifestyle and diet, if there is such a thing that's actually identical, they're not going to have the same health because whatever they're doing is going to interact in a different way with their genes. So that's why some people get rheumatoid arthritis while other people get Hashimoto's, hypothyroidism, and still other people, you know, I'm sure we've all met someone who has

a problem with weight, but they're basically doing the same thing as maybe we are if we don't have a problem with weight. So this is kind of what determines how disease manifests differently in different people. And that's where the genes and gene expression are important, but it's really the exposome that runs the show. That's fascinating. And now I know a new word. Yeah, new word of new word today that's very cool so i want to switch gears a little bit just as we come close to wrapping this up um

and so and i remember it was interesting because um we first met probably a couple years ago but then kind of see each other once a year and get a conference we both go to. And I remember we had a brief conversation last time we were there about the fact that we're both introverts, but we both maintain a growing public profile. And it helps us do what we're here to do. You know, it's, you know, on the one hand, it feels like a necessary evil. Right.

When, like, all you need on a personal level is, like, you just want to geek out and solve cool problems. You know, but part of the equation of doing that is sort of, you know, it's accepting the fact that, you know, you need to actually build this fairly substantial platform to get the word out. How do you dance with that just on a personal level? Yeah, that's a great question. And dance is a good word because it's it's never static it's always changing um i uh one way is like uh when i go to those conferences uh you know when i speak

and stuff and i'm very much there at the conference when i'm there but as soon as i you know i don't go out at night afterwards i go right back to my room or wherever I'm staying and I just have a quiet evening by myself and that really helps me to recharge my batteries. And in fact, it was only when I heard the description of what an introvert really is, is someone that, you know, when their batteries get recharged when they're alone. That's when I really understood that I was an introvert because I enjoy being on stage. I enjoy speaking. I enjoy doing those things, but I have to balance that with time by myself.

And so that's basically how I've done it so far. If I have a period of time where I'm really out there and speaking a lot and doing that stuff, I really have to balance it with a period of time where I am just doing my own thing in my own environment. I would also say that, you know, I published a book and I did a book tour and I did, you know, a media tour and all that stuff. I learned from that experience that I probably don't want to do that too much. There's different paths we can take to have an impact. And for me, I'm seeing that I can probably have the biggest impact writing my blog

and training other clinicians. And I may publish more books, but both because of my own tendencies and just through an exploration of where I think I can really affect the biggest change, I don't know that having, you know, being always out in the public is the best option for me. you also recently just announced some shifts in your policies for accepting private clients. Yeah. Which seems to maybe honor both just your social orientation and also a shift in focus for you. Yeah. So I recently, I've been a solo practitioner for the first several years of my practice and became, you know, my practice has been closed to new patients for most of the last three years just because there's only so much that one, only so much demand that one person can handle.

And I do other things. I only see patients two days a week. I write, research, et cetera. So I joined forces with another functional medicine practitioner, an MD named Sanjay Swag, who's a great friend of mine, an incredible practitioner. And then we started hiring other clinicians. We hired our first already, and then we're preparing to hire a second one. Just sent the email out about that today. And I'm now requiring patients to live in California and to see me in person. I'm just, as you kind of intimated, I'm trying to pull things back into a more

local and personal sphere. And that will also make it easier for me to train other people because I'll have an observation clinic where the people I'm training are there with me and observing and watching. And so in the next few years, I hope to train three or four more clinicians just in that kind of more direct method and then launch this more formal clinician training program as well. Yeah, which I think is also a really powerful lesson for people who are at a point where they're looking how to build their professions their practice their vocation in the world in a way that both um goes out and serves at an effective level makes a difference has an impact but simultaneously serves them in the way that they need to you know

like in in fully expressing their interest that you know, like, that gives them meaning and respects just the fundamental nature of who they are, so that it's sustainable. I think one of the big challenges is that we tend to be drawn towards building a, you know, vocational career practice in the way that's prescribed, this is how it's done, rather than this is how I need to do it for me. That's such a good point. And I think there was a point you know maybe six months to a year ago where it felt like things could move in a direction that um was not really what i wanted to create in the first place and it might not serve me best as far as that goes and like i really thrive on this kind of face-to-face interaction that we're having now. I wouldn't enjoy just, for example, working only on the phone with patients, which is one possibility.

And what I realized too, I already kind of touched on this, was at least for now, I still really need to be in the trenches, like interacting with real patients and experiencing that joy and fulfillment that comes from seeing a life transformed and from being the help that I always wanted to find, in my 10 year journey back to health and training other people to do that. And just researching and writing a blog or selling products or whatever could potentially be a you know more lucrative way to go or something like that but i don't

think it would satisfy me on the deeper level and that's more important than anything yeah totally great so we're hanging out here we're we're having this conversation in your home office. You know, like I'm looking out the window at this glorious sweep of greenery. And as I entered your home this morning, you know, this just beautiful breeze and just energy in the air, which brings me this question that I always ask everybody as we wrap up, which is to you on Alpha the term, to live a good life. What does that mean to you? I would say it means serving my highest purpose while taking care of myself

and experiencing joy and fulfillment and deep connections with other people thank you so much my pleasure, thank you so I hope you've enjoyed this conversation with Chris I know it's given me so much to think about, both in terms of how I explore optimizing and approaching my own health, and at the same time, how I explore building my own business.

I mean, I found it really incredible that at one point he shared how he actually, his practice has been relatively closed to new patients, almost entirely closed to new patients for the better part of three years because he understands that there's only one of him. And while he loves working with patients, he also loves doing the research and loves writing, and also needs to really take great care of himself and his family. And I think those are all great lessons for us to kind of take away from, from this conversation. So I hope, as always, you've enjoyed the show. If you have, I'd be so grateful if you'd head over to iTunes. Just give

us a quick thumbs up or review if you've enjoyed it. And feel free to share it, subscribe if that feels good. And always stop by and check out what's going on at goodlifeproject.com as well. Thanks so much. We'll see you in the next episode. 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 8 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 10s are later required charge time and actual results will vary mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i know you're 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.