Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 410 - Dr. Michael Sagner

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

Dr. Michael Sagner is a medical doctor, sports medicine and preventive medicine specialist. He is a certified strength & conditioning specialist, as well as a certified nutritionist who worked as the founding head of the Department of Preventive Medicine & Lifestyle Medicine at the University of Medical Center Eppendorf. Get in touch with Dr. Sagner here: https://twitter.com/MichaelSagnerMD http://sarenaclinic.org/ Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nsuma Iyeng and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. This episode is recorded on July 14th and it is with Dr. Michael Sagner. Dr. Sagner is a medical doctor, a sports and preventative medicine specialist, as well as a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He currently treats patients with coronavirus, the COVID-19, which we talked a lot about today. It was about half and half that and sports medicine. But when it came to the virus, we asked him a bunch of,

you know, just straight up questions like, okay, what do masks do? Who decided, you know, six feet social distancing was the accurate number? And why is it that this virus has been treated so differently when every season it seems like we have a new flu virus? But this one just kind of took us by storm. And the second half, like I said, was all about sports medicine. He does treat a lot of athletes. And we asked him some more blatant, like very straight up questions. Like, which diet do you feel is optimal for sports performance?

This guy is very knowledgeable. Like we say in the podcast, he was recommended to us by our homie, Bo Hightower, who was just so damn smart. So if he holds them in high regard, then you know this guy's the real deal. So I'm going to get out of your guys' way. Please enjoy this episode with the one and only Dr. Michael Sagner. What's going on today, y'all? You guys had the Piedmontese.

You guys had the Piedmontese. You guys had the Piedmontese Chuck. Shoot, what's it called? It's almost like a ribeye. It's like a Chuck. I think it's maybe it's a Chuck roast. I have not. No, I'm not sure. What's that like?

Please do tell. Yeah, but it's amazing. It's kind of like a ribeye it's like a ribeye but maybe just like a little leaner and then um as we were going around to some different um butchers and learning more about meat uh that was one that people recommended because it's just cheap a lot cheaper than a uh it's a lot cheaper than a ribeye but uh is it's literally just a few inches away from where the ribeye is cut it's just slightly different so it doesn't have as much marbling doesn't have as much fat but uh still tastes amazing and the one from piedmontese is as always is amazing

and see what you're still doing just like the packets of ground beef and eating i have that i have that yesterday and i know i'm being so boring right now but like i have a lot of ground beef and eating it. I had that yesterday. I know I'm being so boring right now, but I have a lot of ground beef to get through. Let's just put it that way. I'm eating this ground beef. I had two packets yesterday at one time, which was exciting. Instead, it was two packets

of ground beef and five slices of cheese. I'm being such a savage with it, but it's so good. At least you're cooking it right i eating your hot dogs eating them head on you're never gonna catch me in the hot dog room uh what what if you what if you cut it up though uh i'll chop it in half and then i'll just take half to the face and then the other half to the face.

Yeah. So it's half acceptable. It's half acceptable. Nice. Awesome. For more information on Piedmontese beef, please head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order.

And if your order is $99 more, you get free two-day shipping. Yeah, I had the ground beef two days ago with like some homemade mac and cheese. It was like low-fat mac and cheese. Again, from our boy Remington. It was incredible, dude. I know

you don't like the, or not that you don't like, but you've laughed when I mentioned the fat-free cheese and how it like turns into plastic. Dude, the fat-free cheddar is really good. I don't know what it's made out of, but it's incredible. It's been my favorite thing to eat lately. Fat-free cheese. It's so good.

Come on now. Oh, God. Yeah, man. Anywho, who do we got on today, Mark? We got Dr. Michael Sagner on the show today, and he's a nutritionist, and he's also an active physician. And it'd just be great to get in conversation with him about some of the things going on with the coronavirus. be great to get in conversation with him about some of the things going on with the coronavirus. And just, he was recommended to us by Dr.

Bo Hightower. So he's somebody that is, I think, a like-minded person like Dr. Hightower, where he's going to just know a wide variety of things. And I think he'll be able to, I don't know, help us make some sense of this stuff. I know that we beat the drum of COVID-19, uh, as much as we possibly could, but, um,

there's still a ton of irrational thought, uh, out there and there's still a lot of hysteria and, and kind of rightfully. So the media tries to spark us up as much as they can and, uh, it works. They, uh, they works. I mean, I don't know what percentage of the media coverage is devoted to it, but there's a massive percentage of it. And almost all the things you see that people are even seeking out, people are searching. People are searching for coronavirus content on top of just what you see on TV. And so it'd be great to have a doctor in the house to kind of maybe just make us feel maybe a little bit more sane about it. You know, we saw some of the results from Japan and everyone's making a big deal about what they did.

But they basically did the same thing that we did. It's just that they're not nearly as fat. So as much as people hate that conversation of us being disgustingly fat and us being gluttonous and us like paying the price now, people don't want to hear that. They don't want to have to pay the price for the sins of eating recklessly for however many years it's been now. So I'm going to kind of talk to – I want to dive into talking to Dr. Stagner about that quite a bit because I think – I really – I wish that that's where the focus was of like, hey, let's try to work on being healthier because what we do know from research is that when people lose about 10% of their weight, 10% of their body weight, you know, normally trying to lose body fat, but when people lose about 10% of their body weight, they get a massive benefit from a health perspective. So how hard is it for someone who weighs 300 pounds to lose 30 pounds?

It can be difficult, but anyone that I ever worked with that's a 300 pounder and I worked with a lot of them to get them to lose 15 pounds. I mean, that happens in like 15 days to get them to lose 30 pounds might take a couple of months, a couple of months worth uh investigating because the coronavirus isn't going anywhere that's the other thing it's not gonna people keep talking about a second wave and these different things it's going to be here for a while like it could be here for a decade or two or three or could be with us forever you know it could be like a flu it could be around uh for the rest of humanity. Who really knows? I don't know how it would all of a sudden disappear.

But the vaccines that everyone thinks is going to be the answer could be part of the answer, but it's not the only thing that's going to help. And vaccines, from my understanding, they help about 30% of the time. You go and get a flu shot and you can still get sick and there's no kind of guarantees on that. Then we also have no idea of the safety of that. So the only thing we can do, you know, we got washing our hands as one thing. We got social distancing is another. Our quarantine is just a larger manifestation of social distancing because it's not a real lockdown. It's just a quarantine.

It's just like, hey, try not to go out too much, try not to get around each other too much. But it's a half-assed version of like a lockdown. So if we actually locked it down, that actually might be something that would – I just don't think it would work from a logistical standpoint because I don't think anybody would want to be like lockdown, lockdown. But anyway, it'd be great to dive into some of that with Dr. Sagner. And I mean, I know you said like, yeah, we have kind of talked about it a lot on this podcast. But I mean, just yesterday, Governor Newsom told all the gyms shut down. So it's still, you know, it's not our fault that it's still happening.

It's still current. But what are your thoughts on that and him shutting everyone down? the one thing that I admire from Governor Newsom is that he at least is like, he at least is sharing the same message over and over again. You know, he, I, there's, there's a lot of other politicians are flip-flopping on whether you should wear a mask on whether you should social distance on how cautious you should be. He has at least took a stance on, Hey, you should be really cautious with this thing. Um, but I, I just think that, you know, these, these in this like political climate that we're in, um, you know, he has kind of an agenda and I don't, I don't know, you know, I don't think he's trying to like wreck the economy. Uh, but there is like a trillion dollars on the line that he could get or a billion.

I forget how much money it is, some crazy amount of money that he could get from the government that he hasn't gotten from the government that could potentially fund California. So maybe he does have hidden reasons on why he's doing it. But we can't really speculate or bother with anything that's going on with him. I think we've got to go back to the podcast we did yesterday and work on ourselves internally so that nothing external can bother us or affect us. There he is. Welcome. Hello. Looks like the microphone's not on. This could be the whole show

let's see how long we can see how long we got you now yeah we're good we're good i think oh that that was it you just need to you just need to yell that's it yeah i'm gonna yell no it sounds good doctor thank you for joining us. Thank you, guys. Great to have you on the show today. You were recommended to us by our buddy, Dr. Bo Hightower. He's a tough person to interview because of his wide variety of things that he has knowledge about. And I feel like this interview is going to be very similar where you have a wide array of things that you studied and you've been in many different fields all the way to nutrition, all the way to helping athletes and celebrities. And so but what I'd like to kind of start out with, what I'd like to talk about in the beginning here is COVID-19 because the coronavirus doesn't appear that it's going anywhere. It doesn't seem like a government can really do much to put a real stranglehold on the coronavirus or make it go

away. So I want to get some of your thoughts on kind of the current state of affairs here in the United States, here in California. We just got a lot of our gyms shut back down, a lot of our restaurants, and a lot of other things have kind of been back into quarantine. I wanted to get some of your thoughts on that. Well, it's a global pandemic now, and it's not going anywhere. The virus is here to stay. I think that's lesson number one. These ideas that we can find a vaccine

very soon or treatment, this is a joke. So the only thing we can do is be smart about how we manage the impact of this virus.

And it'll be with us for the next years at least. So it's difficult to say how societies are going to deal with it. There are some examples like New Zealand, they did a pretty good job. But that's very difficult to replicate in the U.K. or in the U.S. So we'll have to see. It's obviously the states with the different – in the United States with all the different states and different governors, different ideas, let's put it that way. It's going to be difficult because you need a very united approach if you want to tackle this properly. But it's a very complex issue, obviously.

I think one of the lessons learned is that, and I think I saw some of you guys comment on this, overnight we had millions of virus experts. on this. Overnight, we had millions of virus experts. You know in the training field how that goes, right? When it comes to nutrition, because people eat three times a day,

they're all nutritionists. We've seen the same thing now with the virus. Many people have no idea, but they feel that they're entitled to have an opinion and they'll voice that opinion on social media. And that didn't make it any easier. Yeah. Can you give us some insight into like what's the goal?

Like what, you know, it's a little easier to accomplish something if we know what the goal is. So what do you think the goal is with the Corona virus? Is it for all of us just to end up with it at some point and for us to all try to contract it, but maybe slowly or something? I don't know what the goal would be. Yeah. Nobody really knows. Getting it slowly is not possible right you'll get it and the virus is going to and your biology is going to determine to determine whether you get it slowly or um right i meant as a society like get like have it run through us kind of in a slower

fashion yeah so um at the beginning of this pandemic ed young who's a microbiologist a very smart guy um said um this thing is going to burn through the planet it just that's what it does huh and that's exactly what we're seeing now it's here to stay so in fact the infection rate uh mortality rate still seems like it's like really really well it's 0.6 percent still globally um and with that being done like over here in california uh our governor just shut down our like you know shut down gyms, restaurants, et cetera. And it just seems like the death rate hasn't increased here, just the amount of cases that are seen. So what do you think people should be inferring from that? Yeah, that's a good point.

I think this whole pandemic teaches us very important lessons about our societies, human psychology. It goes way beyond just pure epidemiology and this coronavirus. And the virus is a coronavirus. It's not the coronavirus. That's one of the mistakes that people make. And then many people are scared because they don't really understand what the risk is, especially young people. I would assume most of the people watching the show are fit. Hopefully. And these people have a low risk, per se.

If you look at the statistics, these people are not at risk. It's unlikely that they'll get severe symptoms or might die from this. And I think one of the most important things that we should have done is a more targeted approach to this. Locking down a whole society, a whole population, a whole early on that we should have been a bit more nuanced in our approach, which obviously we haven't done. Because panic, I think panic, as we see in all of the countries that are affected, played a huge role. And panicking is never a good idea. When you panic, you don't think. It seems like every, quote, flu season, it brings a different type of flu, or sorry,

just a different version of the flu. And with different coronaviruses being out there, why was this one treated so different in comparison to last year's flu or last year's coronavirus good question yeah nobody really knows i think uh in 10 years 20 years we'll look back at this and there'll be a lot of questions also i'm curious what about uh just go ahead go ahead and see me well i was just curious because i've been hearing like rumors of um different types of i guess symptoms or after people contracting coronavirus different types of things happening like i i heard it may just be some type of big rumor that's going around but some woman contracted it in Germany. And then a few days

later, she started having some hallucinations and brain issues, even though she never had a history of that in her family. And we're hearing more weird things coming from that. Have you heard anything that is actually relevant or truthful? Or do these things just tend to be potentially internet rumors? Yeah, I've treated quite a few patients with COVID-19. And because it can cause a fever, it obviously can lead to many, many other symptoms. If you've ever had a fever, you know that it's a nice thing to have. It's very pleasant and it can give you nightmares. It can, a lot of things.

So that being said, I don't know what happened to that lady, but it can give you a variety of symptoms. And we don't really fully understand the virus yet. We've seen loss of taste to severe respiratory failure in patients. So that's something we're just learning. What kind of treatments would you give somebody that has the coronavirus? There are no guidelines. There are a couple of studies and you've probably seen

in the news that even the President of the United States has been discussing a few treatments and there are no real guidelines. Everything is experimental. Everything is up to the

treating physician. But there is no, uh, single treatment. It's, it's more, um, treating the symptoms and then, um, stabilizing the patient and hoping that, um, the patient answers back, which is the case for many viral infections, by the way. And I know it hasn't been long enough but we've been reading you know cases or whatever you want to call it um where people are talking about how the there's potential for long-term permanent damage um to a person is there any merit to those claims yeah that is possible any infection can do that more or less so that's not specific to coronavirus or this coronavirus and for yourself do you have have you had individuals take any

extra precautions other than just making sure they wash their hands they're not touching their face and maybe um wear a mask out and about do you do you take any other personal precautions with this? Or is that just the general consensus in what you should do? You mean myself? Yeah, yourself as a doctor. Like you're telling people what they should probably be trying to do. Do you have any extra precautions? If you look at the evidence,

washing your hands is the most important thing, because many of these, and it's not just COVID-19, many of the infections that you get actually transmitted, you touch something and then you touch your face. So this is a good rule and it's a bit sad that we have to repeat that.

Please wash your hands, okay? As often as possible and not just for two seconds. Wash them properly. Then the masks, you have to understand that this virus, despite us not fully understanding it, we know that it gets transmitted through the air. So you have to be close to another human being. Through the air meaning somebody has to literally spit at you, right?

So if you walk somewhere, let's say in a park, there is no need to wear a mask. There is no virus up there. Despite, as you just said, the internet rumors, you can't catch it from just walking along the beach. You need another human being who is potentially infectious, very close to you to transmit this virus. And then even if you are exposed to the virus, it still isn't. You might not get it. So there is a certain. So this is basic virology. This is just infectious disease medicine, right?

You need to be exposed to the virus for a certain amount of time. And that depends on your biology and the setting. And then let's assume that you really, the virus enters your respiratory tract, then maybe your body can fend it off. So all these things, most people don't talk about them, and many people don't think about them. But it's because it was, I mean, I remember just a couple months ago,

politicians and, you know, the internet, they were talking about ventilators. And I bet most of these people have never seen a ventilator. They don't even know what it does. It's a bit of a joke. I mean, it's like people talking about the gym and I'm going to use this marble and this. They've never seen it. They've never been to a gym.

So it's a bit of a joke. I mean, how much experience do you have? But this is something we've learned now. There are no barriers anymore yeah john doe can have an opinion and if you scream loud enough people are going to hear you yeah in regards to um uh also wearing masks um it's you know somehow the new norm is uh six feet apart social distancing uh who who determined that six was okay, but five feet is sure death? Yeah, that's a good question.

And that's sort of relates to many other things. Nobody really knows. The Derby of Joe says one meter, then governments made up their own rules. There is no, nobody knows. The W. Joe says one meter, then governments made up their own rules. There is no, nobody knows. We just understand the basic principle, right? You need an infectious patient, you need to be exposed to the virus, that's it.

And then if you apply some basic biology and logic, then you sort of get an idea of what it needs to be, what it takes to be effective. We don't know. How have we as a society, how have we gotten past other viruses just by getting them

and having some people die from it, having some people survive from it, and you become inoculated through that process is that kind of the only does that seem like the only way to get through this virus as well we don't know um whether so this coronavirus is very contagious right this is what makes it maybe unique um it has a low mortality rate compared to other viruses, but it's very contagious. And that was one of the reasons that politicians panicked. It affected many people at the same time.

And it was a bit unfortunate that, sorry for our Italian friends, it hit Italy because their healthcare system is not the most advanced of the Spanish. And they know that. And it hit Italy. In Italy, you still have people living with their parents and grandparents. So the young people very quickly transmitted it, and it hit the vulnerable people very early on.

But we don't know. We'll see. This is a new one. What about some of the other countries that had some other strategies like Sweden and Japan? People are kind of referencing some of these places as maybe handling the situation a little bit better. I think one of the things in Japan is just that they're healthier. They don't have the same obesity rate that the United States has.

What are some of your thoughts on, you know, how Sweden was able to really not shut down? But I do believe they still wore masks and I still believe they had some social distancing. wore masks and I still believe they had some social distancing. Yeah. You know, the really interesting thing is that most countries followed Italy. And there's some evidence now that Italy followed the Chinese example because they had no idea what to do. So basically we're all doing the Chinese thing, right? Lockdown. And this is maybe possible and a good idea in China,

but it's probably not the, the optimal strategy for every country. So there are some countries, New Zealand, you know, they locked down the country immediately, shut the borders. Sweden tried sort of a hybrid, right? They said, okay, it's up to the people. Please be responsible. And the Scandinavian people tend to be pretty responsible when it comes to these things.

They have been criticized because obviously they had a couple of deaths. But we'll see when a second wave or sort of an extended first wave is happening later this year. We'll see whether the Swedes did a good job. But I think one of the key lessons here is also what you just said. We have to go back to basics. People need to take care of their health. We know that the two risk factors for COVID-19 for severe symptoms and death, age and obesity. And it's not, it's, it's uncomfortable for people to talk about it, but we have to.

So those are two things that we feel like we know for certain yeah and with um so like we have seen a rise in cases like in sema was saying um i think we can accredit that to just more testing but even if it is just because of more testing um is it just better in general to have more of that data to move forward with it because it doesn't seem like we've really been able to collect enough data on everything because some of the questions we've asked you, it's like, well, shit, we don't know where the six feet came from. We don't know where some of this information came from. So regardless of someone's opinions or thoughts on the spike coming from just more testing, do you think that it's still generally a good thing that we have

more information? Well, we need more data. And that applies to medicine in general. If you look at, maybe to give an example, if you look at health, the concept of health in general, we have a very, very bad and limited understanding of what that means in a human being, right? We know we can define certain diseases, but we don't really have a definition for good health. And the WHO has a definition, which is a bit absurd and outdated, but it's very difficult for us to define health. What does it mean? Does it mean to bench press 500 pounds, or does it mean to be just standing and, you know, you don't keel over when somebody touches you?

We don't know. So we need a lot more data, and we need to be responsible with that data because data can be noise and can be misused. But in medicine in general and in sports sports medicine we need a lot more data absolutely i was curious about this because um earlier in this month there was some article that was sent to me um and then there were some other people that were also mentioning it of there being some type of new mutation in the coronavirus that doesn't necessarily make it more dangerous, but just makes it easier to spread. It was like D16 or D61 or one of those two or whatever. Now, have you heard anything of that? Do you think that there's reason to be worried about that? Or is it just

something that we now know and we're researching more? at the moment i haven't seen anything that would make that plausible um if you look at evolution viruses tend to become um every mutation makes them less deadly and more contagious okay viruses we've seen them on this planet i mean I mean, we have evidence that they've been around for a very, very, very long time. What are some things that people can do since we don't have enough information at the moment? What are things people can do from a mental perspective uh do you think it's a good idea just to completely unplug from the news because they're not really giving us any anything new and uh they're not really giving us information that's really helpful at this point we we do hear wash the hands we hear that one a lot and so that's important to reinforce that but uh other

than that it seems pretty negative i mean there's people fighting in the streets over wearing a mask and so forth. How can we get a little stronger, maybe mentally, so we don't get triggered and we don't get upset and we don't get worried about all this stuff that's going on around us? I think not watching the news is a good idea because it doesn't matter whether you're in the U.S. or in the U.K. or anywhere on this planet. It's not going to tell you anything that you really need to know. The idea is that it sort of pushes a certain message or entertains you. And scary things can be very entertaining. I remember when I saw my first COVID patients, that must have been in February, I was watching the BBC in the evening and I got really scared. So even though I've seen the patients on the front line,

then going back home, watching the news, I said, my God, this is really awful. And they do a really good job, which is obviously not true because I've seen it. But it is designed to scare you. And it's designed to provoke emotions. And that's very sad because it's really not about informing people anymore. It's really about emotions and selling something. And that's not limited to the United States. Do you have some recommendations for some of the people you work with

on a day-to-day basis of like, hey, you know, I think you should get outside and get some sunlight. I think you should read. I think you should find some old hobbies that you used to love. Because I think the mental stress of what's going on, you know, some of the things that are going on could be interpreted as being traumatic for some people. are going on could be interpreted as being traumatic for some people and they could end up with almost like ptsd depression anxiety from a lot of the stuff that's going on yeah i i um that that's also a very good point um just a couple weeks ago i spoke to the the head the former head psychologist of cambridge analytica if you remember that any of you guys, so that was a big scandal. But very smart people. They understood that humans do not behave like you think or you want them to behave.

You know, humans are irrational beings. And he said, that must have been I think this cure, this treatment, lockdown, is going to be worse than anything else. Because of that, what you just mentioned, the mental health implications. Domestic violence went up 600% in some countries, 600%. and obviously since it's not over yet and mental health has this this this lag effect right um people do not immediately react which is an important thing we have to raise awareness for that um just because some people you know my bicep is 45 this, that. How are you feeling today? Are you okay? How did you sleep last night? Do you feel okay? Do you have energy? And especially men, young men do not like to talk about this. And the suicide rates for young men are through the roof. So I think it's another reason we have to.

And I mean, what are you doing? And fitness, you know, resistance training in general is such an important tool to to help people not just cope physically, but also mentally. Build resilience. build resilience. You know, you mentioned the news and the news is something that I don't watch personally. But because I have so much family, they always send me news articles, especially when it comes to younger individuals. And I constantly see these article titles, more young people dying of coronavirus. And then maybe there will be some names. But then when you do a quick Google search, and you go down a few articles, you find out that the individual named had obesity, or the individual named had underlying conditions. And I'm wondering, from your end, have you noticed, again, any type of difference in terms of the fatality rate in young people, younger individuals, you know, 20 to 35, 40, and the older populations?

Has there been any type of change in the way that this virus is killing certain groups that contract it? Or is it actually the same and it's just being sensationalized? Well, the data is pretty clear. The mortality rates are, as you said, around 1%, less than 1% probably. And most of the fatalities are in people who are 65 and older. It hasn't changed at all. hasn't changed at all. You know what's interesting? If you look at psychology and behavioral psychology, and this is very tragic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is very tragic, but I think there are very important lessons to be learned. It's like a huge social experiment. And one of the things that we learned is that people like to spread news if they cause emotions, even though they know that they are false. There's good data on that. That's true. Yeah.

So since we know that the virus does, my mom does that all the time. Yeah. She posts a lot of stuff on Facebook, huh? So since we know that the, that the virus, you know, it's more, yeah, it's aiming at the 65 and above, like you said. How can we go about moving forward? Like, you know, in your opinion, I know there's a lot of other things going on, a lot of conflicting ideas and opinions but in your opinion um i we've

heard people say like let the young get back to work and then quarantine the the older uh people do you think that is a uh an acceptable and a and you know do you think that's a good idea everything is an experiment but there's uh something called shielding which we could have used so we we knew that it's 65 plus and obese people they are at a very high risk so we could have shielded those people as a first step right then that would reduce the mortality rates a lot because that's the people who died at the end of the day. And masks are stupid, unpleasant, nobody likes them, but that could have been

one of the strategies, just tell people, I know, and this is also another thing, we need politicians who are actual leaders. I would say, okay, this sucks, I don't want to wear a mask, but I'm just going to do it because it doesn't take anything away from me and this is a strange virus out there, let's just wear a mask, but I'm just going to do it because it doesn't take anything away from me. And this is a strange virus out there.

Let's just wear a mask. And I know it's really unpleasant, but let's do it for a couple of weeks. And while we figure out what this whole thing is and wash your hands. So you could have used stuff without locking down the whole country, any country that would have made sense, that would have saved lives. But we just didn't do it. We just panicked. I'll shift gears here for a little bit. I know that you work with people, you know, from a nutrition standpoint and from a, and

I don't know if you still do, but I know that you have in the past worked with athletes. And let's maybe dive a little bit into, you know, trying to figure out how to increase our performance in the gym and just maybe improve our health. And you said earlier that health is sometimes a tough thing to really narrow down and to figure out. Maybe it's individual, right? Maybe one person wants to be strong. Maybe one person wants to run fast or run for long distances. From what you've seen and the people you've been able to help over the years, what style of nutrition has been of benefit? Has it been just kind of the things that we've known for a few hundred years now?

I've heard you in another interview say you want to know about nutrition, you know, ask your grandma and maybe even ask your grandma's grandma might be the right person if you're able to communicate with them. I feel the same about nutrition. I see these people, you know, publishing studies all the time or tweeting these studies, and it's fantastic that we have this information, but it just seems like the things that are meant for us to eat that are on this earth, that if we eat that, we stick to that, that we'll be doing pretty darn good. Have you noticed anything, though, when it comes to sports specifically, of kind of, you know, pushing someone to another level?

Yeah. So health is indeed individual, but there are some basic rules. If your heart doesn't beat, right, or if it beats at 150 BPM, then you're probably not, something's off, right? So we can define these, and that's very fascinating. We published a paper trying to do that, follow up on that. How can you define health in a human being, right? There is sort of a bracket. You could say it's somewhere here. It's certainly not here or there. And physical strength certainly is part of that. it doesn't mean that you have to bench

press 500 squat 800 but um if you're not able to do to move your own body weight in a certain way then you certainly that like that's not healthy right um and then so the way we approach um an athlete and performance enhancement is that we make sure that health is in place. You see some big guys, strong guys, but their health is not – they're not really healthy. And they think they're healthy because they're young, but they're not healthy. And so the first thing – and sometimes it's disappointing because athletes say, you know what, I don't care. I just want to be really strong and fast and powerful, but that's not,

that's, that's not how we, how we approach this. We want to make sure that you're healthy. You said at the end, I'm a preventive medicine specialist. So I want to make sure that you live a long life and that you can live in your sixties.

Right. And you can enjoy your life in your 60s. So that's really the foundation, health. And then once we have established that, we can add to that. We can boost your performance. And there are different things. Obviously, nutrition is a big, big, big component of both health and performance enhancement. There are so many different fads and so many trends in nutrition.

And if you look at the research, as you just mentioned, and really critically look at the literature, a lot of it really is BS. And it's, you know, groups of scientists citing each other, pockets, you know, pockets. And, you know, I'm not going to mention any names. People who just constantly, it goes around and around and there's no new evidence coming in and some of these people I obviously some of these people are friends which doesn't mean I'm not going to criticize them some of these people have spent 20 30 years I'm trying to prove something just to then realize that it's wrong. And all of the funding, the university, their position, whatever,

it all depends on their research. So after 30 years, we don't live in a society that applauds you for saying, hey, damn it, 30 years, that was just not it, you know. No. They try to defend their stuff at all costs. And nutrition is really fascinating because, as I said, you have the lay people who think that they're nutritionists because they eat three times a day, and they've been doing that for a long time. That basically gives you a degree in nutrition.

long time that basically gives you a degree in nutrition. And then you have these people who research it. And it's very difficult to do research in the field of nutrition. You need a lot of money to do proper research. It's very expensive. It takes a lot of time. You can't do randomized control trials. It's very difficult. So the evidence we have is really dodgy.

And some people have been very outspoken just recently and said, hey, guys, this field is just off. It would be better to just listen to your grandma. What do you feel is known known with like the most degree of certainty at the moment like uh um are you a proponent of counting or tracking calories um you know i like what what at the moment is something you can say well i've just seen that time and time again, and that at least appears to be true. Well, it's the basics. It's, again, back to the basics.

And we can discuss the basics. But the reason we're having such a hard time teaching people about nutrition is that it's not very sexy, right? If you tell them, have a little bit of meat, have veggies here, walk 60 minutes a day, people say, hey, this is not – no, give me the secret sauce. No, that's the secret sauce right there. No, no, no, give me the secret sauce.

Give me a pill. No, the secret sauce is have some meat, have some veggies, walk. No, that can't be it, honestly. And because some people are using that, some companies are using that, and obviously certain interest groups, lobby groups are using that. It's becoming increasingly difficult to teach people about nutrition because they say, hey, I have five different things that I read just last week, and I'm just going to buy this one product.

They promise that I'm going to lose weight. I'll do this and that, increase my bench by 50 pounds. So it's very sad because good nutrition is not sexy. There is no single product you need. is not sexy. There is no single product you need. It almost seems like we don't need the entire field because your body tells you. Your body, it gets fatter.

You can't breathe as good. You can't sleep as good. All the attributes that you have full access to normally when you eat properly uh those things start to diminish uh heartburn you know like you get you get a lot of warning signs before you end up in this category of being unhealthy yeah absolutely and this is this is an fact. Most people get used to that, right? Just being a bit chubby is just normal. Being out of breath, you know, walking to the supermarket is just normal.

And I see people at the airport that travel a lot, and they're out of breath because they have a small bag to carry. And for them, this has become the new norm. Our grandfathers and their grandfathers, they would be embarrassed because physical fitness for all of the generations before, let's say the last

two, was key just in order to survive. You couldn't go below a certain level of physical fitness, otherwise you would just get sick. Society is going to remove you, or nature. So I think that's very sad that we've gotten to this point where people just, they think it's normal.

My body fat is 39%. That's just normal. You know, when I asked executives, CEOs, so how's your sleep? Well, it's never been good, you know, four hours, wake up and really feel really low, no energy. It's the new normal. it's the new normal. Being chubby, obese, not having energy, being tired, anxious, is the new normal.

It's difficult to move away from that now. As I said, very basic ideas that actually don't cost much money. People would rather buy a product, this one pill, uh, this one drink, this one fitness solution, um, which companies obviously have, have, um, used and abused. Oh, yeah. Um, so then, uh, what, what is your opinion on the carnivore diet? We've talked a lot about that in the past. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

It's just a diet. Maybe to, again, go back to basics. And I think this is very important when it comes to nutrition. Remove the emotions. Our ancestors, we know that, ate meat. Even people who are hardcore vegan, vegetarian, whatever, any of these subgroups, proponents, they would say, yeah, we know that. That's a fact.

It's undeniable, homo sapien and meat, that was always going on for thousands of years, probably millions of years. Now, you could then say, okay, maybe we have evolved in a way that we don't need meat anymore or we can actually do without meat. We know that. And you can then go to the other extreme, people who do not eat any animal products, vegans, and that's increasingly popular. People are, you know, veganism in the UK, Europe, in the US is taking off. We know that these people very often have deficiencies, and even the top vegan people, you know, the vegan societies

or whatever they call themselves, they know, yeah, it's not optimal for you and it's rather difficult to do. But then you just take these supplements here and you'll be good. So if that's your truth, if you think you can have a rather unnatural diet and then just supplement the hell out of it. If that's the way you want to live, okay, it's possible. But it's unlikely that that is how your biology wants you to eat and how you intend it to function. So I think that we can all agree on that. And a carnivore diet or ketogenic diet

i think that's obviously that's another extreme diet some people benefit from it um and for some people it'll be very hot and and have side effects that's um i think somewhere in between is is um is where most people should be i like how you're maybe even switching up your nutrition here and there, right? It's maybe change it seasonally or go through some different diets, you know, different times of the year type thing. Well, if you go back to the idea that you follow sort of a ancestral diet,

just looking at what our grandparents and their grandparents ate, obviously it was seasonal, right? It's rather natural for you to have pineapple, mango, you know, living in Stockholm. How would you get that? It was probably a more carnivore-based diet and veggies with a rather low amount of carbohydrates. And other groups had access to foods that had more carbohydrates, lower protein content in their diet. So I think there's a range.

It depends on your genetics and also your preferences, where you want to be on this range. But if you've, and veganism is a good example. A good friend of mine, Rory Sutherland is the head of Ogilvy in London. And he does a lot of research when it comes to behavior. And when you ask people, why did you just do that? For example, why do you follow a vegan diet? It's never about the health aspect.

You want to identify as a vegan. Because this group, if we had a vegan here, you would immediately associate certain things with that, right? And it wouldn't be health. You would think, okay, vegan, it's that, that, that, that. It's an identity. And most people follow that diet because they want to have that sort of identity. They want to be part of that group.

It's very often not about the health benefits. If you're looking at a healthy diet, veganism is certainly not the first choice. Backtracking just a little bit to what you mentioned about health, I first off like how you mentioned in terms of the nutrition aspect of things to take emotion out of it and just look at the facts. I really do like that. But now I'm curious

because when you look at, like, for example, athletes, strength athletes, people that can move massive amounts of weight, just inhumane amounts of weight around really, really well, right? And you mentioned that health is a spectrum.

We kind of understand that around here is healthy and here and here is unhealthy. You use the example of having no heartbeat and then 150 beats per minute, not healthy. But do you yourself, when potentially, since we have a lot of strength athlete listeners, looking at a strength athlete that can move a lot of weight, do you believe that there are certain things this individual should be able to do to just be healthy? For example, I know some strength athletes that if you told them to take a very brisk five-minute walk, by the time they come back, they'd be slightly out of breath. It seems that there's a missing piece of the puzzle

for that individual. Do you have any benchmarks that you would suggest, hey, start doing some of this, start paying attention to this? Do you have anything like that? We don't really have any numbers. I think Mark mentioned that a couple of times. You can't be just strong and fat. And at the end of the day, you know that you're not really fit, right? Because you struggle, as you said, just going for a walk. And traveling is a good example. When you see people like that traveling, I mean, for them, it's exhausting. It's like an 85-year-old. I think fitness and a couple of definitions

should be the foundation. GPP, general physical preparedness, you have to be fit. Whether you're a 40-meter dash or, you know, your 60-minute walking time, whatever, you just have to be fit. And if you distill it down, I think we can, for example, a good measurement would be resting heart rate. Your resting heart rate is high. Then we know that something's off, you know.

And I've seen some really big guys and strongmen powerlifters, they're just unhealthy. And they say, well, I don't care. For a couple of years, I'll just do it like that. But that's going to leave scars. I mean, scars, that's going to leave damage. It's not something you can maintain. And it would be pretty easy to fix just by adding a little bit of fitness,

something you can maintain and it will be pretty easy to fix just by adding a little bit of fitness, GPP. And, um, that obviously, if you, I think that has changed quite a bit that even, um,

strongman power lift is now look at health, um, bodybuilders, um, professional bodybuilders who have been really unhealthy for, for, for a while. Now I understand that.

Yeah, I have to do some cardio i i you know i need to be healthy first and some people can get away with a lot of stuff uh and um it doesn't mean it's okay for you how about this i was curious about this um as far as nutrition is concerned, we were talking about different diets going, again, to the extremes. And you mentioned taking it to the basics, looking at maybe what our grandparents or our great-grandparents ate, right? And something that our great-grandparents probably didn't eat was super highly processed, palatable, sugary foods that you can overeat massive amounts of. So I'm curious when you talk about basics, because when you talk to other nutrition experts

about basics, they'll say everything in moderation, even a lot of these highly processed foods, if you're okay and if you have them in moderation, that'll be okay. But when you talk to other experts, they're like, yo, like you mentioned, your great-grandparents didn't have that stuff. It would be a good idea to eliminate it. Are you in favor of moderation and having small amounts of these foods? Are you more so in favor of potentially eliminating it from your diet?

Or is that a person-to-person basis thing for you? This is very interesting. It's a really nonsensical thing, let's just say. I hate it when people say that, everything in moderation. When I remember, I think it was at MIT or somewhere in Boston, and people said that, a guy on stage. And then I was about to speak. I thought I'd speak after. So if it's everything in regards stage and then uh i was about to speak i was thought i'd speak after

so if it's everything in regards to nutrition everything moderation i'll just do kfc mcdonald's and moderate pizza i'll just balance it properly you know the italian americans and mexican food in there um it means nothing it means absolutely nothing everything in moderation what in moderation do you need to drink um vodka and then a little bit of gin? What does that mean? It means nothing. And you guys, and we have a basic understanding of nutrition, but imagine somebody who has absolutely no clue. They struggle with the idea of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. And then you tell them everything in moderation. But their moderation, you can imagine

what that looks like. hats and then you tell them everything in moderation but their moderation you can imagine what that looks like i also wonder you know from uh ancestral standpoint if there would be a scenario where you would eat uh you know 100 or 200 grams of carbohydrate in a sitting i think it would probably be fairly rare unless you found some berries or something, but that would kind of be like your upper limit because too much of that would start to very common for you to eat a few hundred grams of protein and maybe even a hundred or depending on your size, you might eat a couple pounds of meat or a pound or two of meat because it might be a while before you get your next meal, your next feeding. So I think it makes a lot of logical sense to try to think, how did we used to eat? And we don't need to eat that same way anymore.

I don't need to go out and try to wrestle a bear. I could simply go to the grocery store and get some meat or whatever other means we have nowadays with deliveries to your front door and all that kind of stuff. deliveries to your front door and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, it seems like it makes a lot of sense to kind of go back in time and say, hey, this is how we used to eat. Let's try to have a large percentage of the diet look at least a little bit similar to that. Absolutely. Just understanding that, A, we don't know much about nutrition. If you look at the data, it's all a bit dodgy. The science, we don't have a lot of data when it comes to nutrition at the end of the day, valid, good data.

So if you look at evolutionary biology, I think that's a good idea to just use that as your guiding principle. And many of the things you just said are just obvious. And another important factor is I think it has become a big fad now, intermittent fasting. This has been around forever. This is how our ancestors lived. If you still have your grandmother and grandparents alive, they should be telling you, yeah, we didn't have a lot of food for a couple of days. I lived on this little piece of thing. Yeah, we now call that

fasting and there are products to mimic fasting, which is a complete it's incredible that we've come to this point. But yes, these principles, as you just said, still apply. You're still homo sapien. I think you're way too logical to be an actual doctor. So has your ability to be rational, has this gotten you in a lot of trouble? Yeah, it has.

It has, yeah. Yeah. Well, I left academic medicine because of that. Because if you want to be in an academic system, I was head of department for a while at a university medical center. You can't really tell it like it is. And even though the evidence is very clear, you know, you walk in and say, look at the evidence.

We have to change that. No, no, no, no, no. Because Professor Smith spent 30 years proving that this is not the case, and we have to support his idea now. And this is – academics, forget it. It's a huge mess. So when – because, I mean, when we were talking about you and looking about some of your information, lifestyle medicine was mentioned. And maybe I'm just uneducated, but before this point, I've never really seen lifestyle medicine, or I've never seen it like mentioned in that context of the way that you do it. So can you explain to us exactly

what it means to be someone who practices it mean, it looks like it's in the name, but what does it mean to practice lifestyle medicine for people? it's in the name but what does it mean to practice lifestyle medicine for people well i have to say i'm not very happy with that term um lifestyle medicine is something that other people came up with and um i published a book uh a medical textbook which is quite successful harvard uses it uh people at yale stanford but um it not really – I couldn't even define it. At the end of the day, the idea was that we look at lifestyle factors that determine your health, the treatment and prevention of lifestyle-related diseases and so on.

It's a vague term and has been hijacked by a lot of groups, functional medicine, lifestyle medicine, and I take these supplements here and do wheatgrass juice and so on. So I don't identify as a lifestyle medicine doctor, even though I've published one of the major textbooks in the field. At least it's called lifestyle medicine, but it's a bit of a dodgy nonsense thing. I wouldn't use the term to be honest okay that's got to be pretty cool to have written a textbook i don't know can you guys think of uh have we ever

had anybody else on the show that's written a textbook before not officially i don't think so maybe a couple that, but nobody has. Yeah, that's got to be a good feeling. Have you written multiple textbooks after you did that first one? Yeah. I co-authored one which was quite successful in Europe, Sports Medicine or Exercise Physiology in Internal Medicine. And that was really the introduction. Many doctors do not know anything about sports medicine. And that is not the orthopedic surgical side, but the internal

medicine side. That is nutrition, performance, sleep, really everything that you've been talking about the last 10 years, 15 years. Many doctors have no clue. And that was a successful book um and then lifestyle medicine um it's that's i mean third edition now um but we'll try to remove the you know change the name for the next edition what have you seen in in uh being able to help athletes and being able to help them keep uh some lean muscle mass and in some cases even gain some lean muscle mass. Has it been helpful to have some carbohydrates in the diet? Because we hear some people that are proponents of carnivore, like you can get big off carnivore, you can gain muscle off carnivore, you can gain weight off of keto.

But as Stan Efferding, our good friend, points out, it's a lot easier to take the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building than it is to use the stairs. And in that analogy, it's easier to utilize carbohydrates as kind of like your friend. They utilize them to help you get bigger, help you kind of hold on to some muscle mass or even gain muscle mass. onto some muscle mass or even gain muscle mass. Yeah. You have to understand there's nothing magical about macronutrients. We know that protein is essential, fats are essential, carbohydrates are not essential.

It's mainly a source of energy, and that's how you have to use it or you should be using it. You have to sort of get an idea of how much energy you're expending, how much, and some of the carbohydrates can be turned into amino acids and then, you know, it can be helpful, but obviously if you overdo it, you'll get fat. And the first thing that's going to happen,

you'll have water retention. And then at some point you get fat. And obviously that's a nice way. If you want to gain weight. Yeah. That's going to happen very quickly. But is that quality muscle? No, unlikely.

So one of the first things I would do with an athlete is protein. The protein intake has to be high, and then they have to learn how to control their carbohydrate intake depending on their energy expenditure that day when you say hi in terms of protein intake do you have like is it do you go obviously based on the athlete when you're individually working with someone but for people listening like for example do you think of the one gram per pound do you think of it one gram per pound of body weight like or not body weight um, the amount of muscle they have on their frame in terms of a gram per pound of that.

How do you kind of help people interpret the amount of protein that they should be intaking? If you look at the signs, and one of the guys who's done a lot of research, so this is Jose Antonio in Florida, a buddy of mine, and you can go very high and still get benefits. So it'll go like this, and then at some point it'll level off, right? So most people could, especially resistance training athletes, they need a lot more protein.

They can use a lot more protein than they think. That's number one. And number two is that increasing protein doesn't come with side effects. It's bizarre. It's 2020. There's a coronavirus pandemic, and people still think that protein causes kidney damage or makes your hair fall out or whatever.

So it does not do any of that. So, yeah, you can go pretty high most of us need more and could use more protein i'm curious if you've heard of protein leveraging before and some of the kind of theories behind that you know basically just when you eat more protein it can help to uh drive down down the overall amount of hunger that you have. Yeah, it's probably the most, if you look at society, protein is probably the best macronutrient. If you have a low-protein diet, which has been, you know, in the 80s and 90s, they had these high-carb diets, low-protein. That's difficult to sustain because you'll be very hungry, especially if it's refined carbohydrates.

You'll be very hungry all the time. What about the average person that's trying to lose weight, that they're maybe not very active? How much protein can someone like that take in, say, per meal? We don't really know. how much protein can someone like that take in, like, say, per meal? We don't really know. The data now, there are some internet rumors, you know, 20 grams, 30 grams, 40 grams. None of that has ever been proven.

It might be as high as 60. And going back to what Mark said, if you look at evolutionary psychology, biology, then it's unlikely that there's a cutoff point. You had access to meat and protein. Protein meaning, if you go back to the origin of that word, means it's essential. It's highly unlikely that there's a cutoff point, a limit to what we can absorb and digest in a single setting.

How into it do you get when you're working with athletes? Do you check muscle fiber types and do blood drawings and all kinds of different things like that? We used to do biopsies, but we didn't really learn much from that. So we stopped doing that. But we do a lot of blood stuff. We do labs at least every three months for all of our athletes.

One of the main things you look at may be insulin sensitivity. Yeah, that's basic stuff. Metabolism, hormones, inflammation, all of that yeah i'd imagine if you could feed the athlete more food uh they'll probably be uh more of a machine or more of a monster the athletes that handle handle more food yeah yeah yeah um it depends on how much food you need right what are your requirements

so we would balance that obviously how do you treat go ahead and see me i was curious um because you kind of alluded to it a few times in terms of people wanting a magic pill or people like vegans for example example, supplementing a lot of things that they're not getting through their diet. But inevitably, the question is going to come up in terms of supplementation, maybe what you would sometimes suggest. And then kind of backtracking all the way back to when we were talking about the coronavirus, there are some individuals like ronda patrick who like were very very big on supplementing high amounts of vitamin d she says there's been no really

research on it but it's a good idea to do that uh do you are there any supplements that you suggest that people should add to their lifestyle like if they're maybe not getting enough sun, or even if they do get some sun, some vitamin D, et cetera, or are you just like, you know, you can get everything through your diet and supplements aren't that necessary unless you have a specific case? One of the big arguments pro-supplements is obviously, yeah, you're not going to get anything, you know, in a modern society, you're not going to get all the nutrients, all the important minerals and so on. And this is probably valid.

So, in theory, obviously, as a homo sapien, you can get all of the nutrients that you need from your diet. That's human biology, right? That's how mammals function. That's the idea, that you can eat and then you live and then you're okay. Now, in a modern society, especially if you look at what people really eat, not what they tell you. This is another big problem with nutrition research because it's usually based on questionnaires and

what people tell you, recalls. I'm not going to tell you that I just had two Snickers bars. Even though I know you told me 10 times, please mention it. I'm not going to mention it. I'm going to have a vodka martini in a minute, maybe two. I'm just going to skip that. I obviously had a high-protein, fiber-rich breakfast, and then two chicken breasts.

Nobody does that. Very few people actually do that. When I was a young physician, I was very pro supplements. I mean, we supplemented a lot. And then I was a bit more conservative. And now having seen a lot of athletes and people, there are some supplements I would recommend. And obviously, you look at the blood work and then decide whether that person needs something different. But a multivitamin is probably a good idea for most people, even though there is some conflict in research. But we tend to put people on a multivitamin if there are no contraindications.

Vitamin D, depending on where you live and how your lifestyle um interestingly sports nutrition is a lot more solid than normal nutrition they are a lot more um serious about the research and a lot more rcts um and we know that creatine for example is a good good supplement and probably um not just for athletes. So there's some supplements that make sense. And then there are a lot of supplements that are just complete bogus and nonsense. What about treating… Thank you for your time today.

No, go ahead. Just one quick question. As far as treating a patient with low testosterone using nutrition. Fixing low testosterone with nutrition? Unlikely to work. Nutrition has very little impact on testosterone levels. A little bit, but you can't fix low testosterone just with nutrition. Got it.

Maybe your sleep might be somewhere else to look up. Yeah. Sleep, stress. Definitely. Yeah. Where can people find you, Dr. Sagner? Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. My pleasure. I'm on Twitter. I can send you a link and some contact information. That works. Great. Yeah. Thank you again.

And I really appreciate your time. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Just email me, okay? Sounds good. I will. Got it. See you. That's cool. Great, man.

Yeah, you did a great job of handling all those corona questions. You know, it's a difficult thing to get through when you're currently somebody that's servicing people that have the coronavirus. uh, servicing people that have the coronavirus, you know? So, um, you know, he can't really just come on and say like, Hey, I don't think it's a big deal. Or, you know, he's gotta be, uh, you know, mindful of, of the people that he's assisting, the people he's helping. Um, but I thought he gave, uh, a lot of great information. And as we've seen with other guests, whenever we have someone who's highly intelligent on here, they're not,

they're the first people to say that they don't know. That's how you know someone's really smart is I mean, they don't say I don't know to everything, but he, even in nutrition, which I've been saying this for a very long time, I actually think we should just do away with the entire category and just forget about it because it doesn't seem to have been useful or productive. I even commented back to something that our good buddy Lane Norton posted the other day, and I was just like, has anything in nutrition, have there been any studies that have helped us in any way,

that helped us learn anything more than just common sense? I mean, we know that the animals that are here for us on this earth are to be hunted. We've made weapons to be able to kill them and chop them up and everything else. So we are the apex predator. So we kind of know that. We've done that for many, many years. And then in terms of other food that you would get, it would be pretty scarce. And you actually physically need protein. You physically need fat. Anyone who has ever watched the show alone, which I think is on Netflix, pretty good show.

It's like a survival show and you're out in the wilderness for just as, as many days as you can survive. And people have survived so far up to like, I think a hundred days, you win like 500,000 bucks and it comes down to like, it comes down to like one person in the end. But there were people on the show that this one guy in particular on episode number six, which is the episode everyone should watch because it's amazing. This, this one competitor kept having his fat stolen and his fat was stolen by a Wolverine. And he, he like tried to hide his fat.

He killed a moose, which was amazing. Killed a moose. And he kept trying to hide his fat. And he had his fat stolen repeatedly. He would try to keep it in a little bucket. And he tried to put it in all these different places. But his body weight just started going down. He wasn't feeling good.

And the same thing was happening to other people. They couldn't catch fish. They couldn't, they couldn't get food, but it's not like they were, they weren't like, oh my God, I need lettuce. They weren't like, oh my God, I wish I had a ton of kale, you know, which would have helped them survive longer, but they need stuff that's dense in nutrients. They need calories. They need fat. They need protein. And I think he pointed that out really well that from a dietary standpoint, we don't actually need carbohydrates. Maybe somebody might feel they need them to have a little bit better well-being. Maybe they just feel better when they eat them and that's fine. But to recognize the carbohydrate as just an energy and then utilizing it as energy, like how many cups of coffee do you have in a day? You know, you get a little zip from it in the morning, right? Maybe you do something similar with your carbohydrates, get a little zip from it before training or get a little replenishment after a training session. But people are not doing that and they're just stuffing their faces all day. but people are not doing that and they're just stuffing their faces all day and i think it has led to where we're at now and then a virus comes along and opens us up makes us super super

susceptible we've had someone come on this show and talk about 5g and how they thought that that could potentially open you up to uh illness and viruses and stuff like that. And there's not enough information on that at the moment, but I don't think it's 5G. I think it's the fact that we're fat that has opened us up to and made us super vulnerable to disease and viruses. Yeah. And, you know, when you actually, you just said this, like the, we should just get rid of nutrition altogether. Like the study of it altogether. I get what you're saying.

And it's kind of funny because there is a point where nutrition kind of led us to demonizing fat for quite a while. We were demonizing butter and fat, et cetera. There's even points where we demonize, like we, and the people are still demonizing meat, which is really weird. Um, but I think like, uh, the bigger thing to pay attention to here is like with all the, these like these sugary, highly palatable foods that people tend to overeat. Um, the, the bigger thing is trying to understand like people's behavior. Because I think everybody or a lot of people,

a majority of the American population probably, or not a majority, but hopefully a majority, kind of knows the basics of, yeah, I shouldn't probably be eating this. But they're driven to eat it because of their behavior, because it's just, it's something that some people just can't control so if they were able to get a handle on that their behavior and the things that they do day to day then they'd just be able to eat what they actually need to eat i think you have a lot of faith you need to be the most in you know the population to be the

most cautious with our kids yeah go ahead no it's i know sorry for the most in you know the population to be the most cautious with our kids yeah go ahead no it's i know sorry for the delay but you know the majority should know you know or should have an idea but um it's funny i just watched uh supersize me too or whatever it's called and it's really good it's free on youtube highly it because it, he just goes in and shows like how much bullshit everything in the chicken like food industry is. How like, you know, free range doesn't really mean free range. No antibiotics, no hormones actually doesn't mean anything because they don't do that anyways. So yeah, like I just think people are very much misled and then they'll just take everything for face value.

And like, yeah, I got a chicken sandwich from Burger King. I'm healthy. Like I did, I made a healthy choice today. So I'm going to go ahead and have that Ben and Jerry's now, you know? So I, yeah, it's a lot, a lot of confused people, I would say. people, I would say. Yeah, I think where we need to be the most cautious is with our kids because they literally don't know. They don't know. They don't have previous history or experiences to go off of. And so that's something that's important to teach and ingrain and to try to make sure that there's healthy options around. I tell my kids, you know, they search through the pantry just like any other kid and they say, we don't have anything.

And I'll go to them and I'll say, we could go to the store right now if you want. And, you know, pick out five, seven things that you feel are healthy that you like. And then if you want, you could pick out a couple things that I'm just going to look the other way when you throw them in the basket. You know, but let's have the majority of the food be stuff that you feel is a healthy choice. And then they kind of like are looking at me as they're putting stuff in the basket. They're like, is this pretty? And then there's a couple things that kind of, you know, ride that line. But as long as it's, you know, as long as they're not loading the cart up with a bunch

of junk, then I'm usually okay with it. There's certain things that as a parent, there's certain, you don't want to be like, you know, fighting these uphill battles all the time. It just, I don't think anyone has the energy for it. But at the same time, I try to make sure that they have at least two healthy meals every day. What they do the rest of the time, neither one of them, I'm very fortunate, neither one of them has a problem with eating. Neither one of them cares.

They're not obsessed with food. They don't overeat one of them cares about like, they're not obsessed with food. They, they don't overeat. Uh, Jake likes to have ice cream and he probably has ice cream, like, I don't know, three, three to three to four times a week. Um, but he doesn't overeat and I've been on like walks with him and stuff and we'll talk about food and different things. And he, uh, I'm talking to him about like working out and stuff like that. And he's like, ah, you know, he's like, I thought about working out, but he's like, I'll just eat less. Cause I just don't really care that much about food. So I just want me.

And I'm like, all right, well, yeah, you're, you're, you're balancing it out that way. You know, I, I'd love for him to exercise. I'd love for him to hit the gym he was doing that a while back it was kind of neat to have him uh doing some of that hopefully he gets into at some point but he was like yeah i'll just eat less i was like oh that's actually a pretty decent answer yeah yeah i really like that idea of you know because i know it we will face that where there's nothing to eat here and it's like, we just went to the grocery store. But to just have her lead the way and like, hey, let's do this.

I really like that idea a lot. So, thanks for that one. Yeah, yeah. What do you want to get? It's like you just disarm. You try to disarm their excuses. And you could do that with an adult as well where they say, I just don't know what to eat. And then you can say, okay, well, what do you think you should eat? Like, let's start there. Kind of the same way that you might assess someone's squat. Like, what's the best way to do

it? Is the best way to talk about it? Or is the best way to say, oh, let me actually see you squat. You know, they squat the bar, you watch them do a couple, a couple sets and you, you watch their squat the bar, you watch them do a couple, a couple sets and you, you watch their behavior, um, kind of all the way through, just like you might want to examine someone's diet all the way through, Hey, write down what you're going to eat, uh, or write down what you're eating, you know, over the last three days, or can you remember what you ate over the last two or three days? Um, let's have you write that out and let's examine that because somebody might say, you know, I gained 10 pounds in the last couple of weeks. I don't know what happened. And you can say, hey, well, I, you know, I think I know what's wrong.

Or you can give them a base point to where they write down what they're eating for just a couple of days without even really having a nutritional intervention. Then when they come back to you with that information, you could say, oh, well, if we swap this out for this, this would be a better choice. If we made this decision here, this would be a better choice. You should probably up your protein. I noticed you only ate 100 grams of protein in a day and you weigh 250 pounds. We should bring that way up. We should maybe bring the carbohydrates down a little bit. And these are all things that are when you are teaching somebody, they will very easily see. I mean, they can see it.

They can see it on a piece of paper. They can see you kind of coaching them through it. And then once they actually try it, they should be able to start to lose some weight, get some momentum. I think within two or three days of somebody getting on a diet, especially a diet that's going to work well for them, they'll notice a massive, I don't know about you guys, but like when I get a little more strict with my diet here and there, it just takes like two days and I'm like, Oh, okay, this is the way,

this is the way this body is supposed to feel. This feels awesome. Yeah, absolutely. I agree there. One, um, one thing that is, uh, obviously it's important right now because I think today is the first official day of California shutdown. I'm not sure if, uh, I'm not sure if Florida is also doing a shutdown, but there might be a few other places that are like, you're getting rid of shutting down gyms and shutting down restaurants and

stuff. But we were talking a lot about dying this episode and some people finally got there, met themselves back into the gym after things opened up. But now it's once again being taken away. I've been seeing a lot of posts of people just absolutely pissed about it. Just start moving again you know don't don't like some people just got back in the gym and they weren't working out during quarantine

well please don't let this yeah don't let this be a time where you stop working out again or you stop moving as much and you try and wait again for the gym to open up because at this point we don't know if this is going to be a new normal where things will open up we see more cases and then boom they do it again you know we we can't depend on the gym being there and we can't depend on just like we can't depend on a vaccine to cure us we just got to do things ourselves to take control of our health so yeah and maybe a suggestion uh you, use that energy for something else, you know, use that energy that you're mad either to go do something about it and exercise or to voice your opinion politically, you know, try to contact somebody that can maybe do something

about it. I, I, I'm aware of like a few people that have like lawsuits and stuff like that against the governor, who knows if they'll ever be able to be heard or a few people that have lawsuits and stuff like that against the governor. Who knows if they'll ever be able to be heard? Or there's people that have petitions. I know that a lot of these things, they seem futile. It seems like a real uphill battle. But sometimes you get enough people's attention. And you can at least put pressure on people, right? We saw people were completely disgusted by what happened with George Floyd.

People should be pissed about what's going on right now, and they should be voicing their opinion in whatever way they can. I don't think anybody should be violent about it by any means. violent about it by any means, but how about some demonstrations and some protests against what's going on right here? Because this, this is like, you know, it's easy for me to say, like, if I had a restaurant, I would just stay open. But I think if I had a restaurant, I would just stay open. You never know. I can't, I don't want to like infer that, you know, I would do something courageous when, when I'm not in the same position as these other people. Because maybe if all my finances, all my life savings, maybe if they were on the line, maybe as much as I would want to do that, maybe my wife would be more rational and say, hey, we can't really do that. But we do need more people that are brave.

We need more people that are brave. We need more people that are willing to go to jail for it. We need people that are like, you know, Hey, fuck this. Like I'm going to just continue to run my business the way I'm going to run my business, but easier, easier said than done. But I would suggest that if you are frustrated with what's going on, especially here in California or in your state, state you know do your best to try to find out who do you communicate with um is it like a health commissioner is it the governor um if you poke around enough you should be able to find uh some of the right people to communicate with yeah everybody should line up plates in front of politicians doorsteps like just so high that they can't move

it yeah get all the 45s in front of the door like hey since we don't need these anymore we figured you guys probably should use them do something about it man when we were talking about the news in this episode though it's because i've i've got some homies and it's really crazy how much fear they would stir up in people, like people my age about this. And it's like, I'm not saying people shouldn't be cautious. You need to be cautious. You need to be doing those things to wash your hands. But I've got friends that are legit scared of coming out of their house and they don't have people in their house that are at risk, you know, like they're, they're fairly healthy.

And then it's like, they're not staying with old people or anything like that. They're just legit actually scared of the Corona virus. You know, you can't tell them not to try not to be cautious, but there's a point where it's just like, yo, you're doing the most, like you're really doing too much right now, you know? And it's not just gonna that that like jesse burdick i think mentioned this to us too that fear isn't just gonna go away when people get back into

the population and stuff there is still just gonna be that fear that's been that's within somebody because of this bs yeah and like we were talking earlier about like that, it was an article talking about a response on Quora that somebody had posted something like, I can't believe we're going to shut down the entire economy for a 1% death rate, which isn't accurate. So that already throws the whole argument out the window. But the response was, okay, there's 328 million people in the United States. 1% means 3 million people dead. And so, it's like people see that and they're like, oh my gosh, that's right. Like, oh, 3 million people are going to die or have already, you know, on the process of dying. Yeah, total just, yeah, it is scaring a lot of people.

Well, I think that people think that you're trading out, you know, money for bodies type of thing. And it's like, oh, well, the economy, you know, it will snap back at some point. But that's not really what I hope that no one means that. I don't think anyone has a disregard for life. I don't think anybody, I shouldn't say anybody. I think the majority, like most people don't have a disregard for life and I don't want to see anybody get hurt or anybody get sick. But what I would say to the loss of two million people or loss of three million people is that they're going to fucking die anyway. Like we're like this virus is here. This virus will most likely kill someone that we know or someone that we know through somebody else. It's it's here. And so just be accepting of it. There is literally not much you can do about it. You can wash your hands.

You can try to take care of yourself. The most important thing you can do is to take care of yourself. That's the most important thing to do. Make sure that you're you're strong physically make sure you're strong mentally and empower those people around you communicate with them that they need to be healthy they need to be fit they need to get some sunlight there's a lot of connections to vitamin d when we have a guest coming on uh coming up in a couple days he'll explain the research uh behind what's going on with vitamin D.

It's not necessarily about taking a pill, but it is about getting proper amounts of sunlight every day. But there's really not much we can do. You can't, there's not a whole lot you can do with a virus. I think what the government is trying to do, the government is trying to slow down the spread of the virus. So they're trying to have, they're trying to slow down the spread of the virus. So they're trying to have they're trying to basically. And this is what I think people aren't telling you. The same amount of people will probably contract the coronavirus regardless of what we do.

It just will go out throughout the country and throughout the world a little bit slower. I think that's I think that's what they've been instructed to try to do. That's what they're trying to do. But I just think that a lot of times we're allowing our emotions to get the best of us, and we keep seeing all these other things that throw us off track. We keep seeing how many people have it, And then we lose sight of the fact that I think when it's extrapolated out and they take in consideration age, I think we're down to 0.003% of the people that it's even I mean, it's just the percentage of people that are in harm's way that are that are of a normal age is just like it's insanely low. The odds you have better odds of probably getting struck by lightning than you do of contracting this and dying. But there's still there still are some odds that you could, you know, you could potentially.

So you also don't want to spread it to anybody else. So that's why it's important that you wash your hands, but just try to stick to what we currently know. And if you go back to what Dr. Sagner said, and I wouldn't suggest that you only take the advice from one person, I would, you know, uh, research more on your own as well. But he said, age and obesity. I was like, is that, do we feel like we know that for certain? He's like, yes. Anything else was kind of up in the air, you know? So, um, to have some, a little fear over this thing, I don't think is a horrible thing. Um, but to think that we're strong enough to actually really do anything about it, we can't. We don't currently have the knowledge to knock this thing out of the box.

We don't know what to do. Even if a vaccine is made, a vaccine is not a cure. And I know that people don't want to hear this because it sounds like glim. But if we take the things that we know and take the things that we don't know, we do know that if we shut down the economy, that we will kill our population in a different way. Mental health issues will be prominent. Who the hell else knows what will happen? issues will be prominent. Who the hell else knows what will happen? But if it goes on for too long, if those things are shut down for too long, we know that it could potentially have some catastrophic results. If we just go about our business and just leave things open and just continue to go forward, the other thing that we know is that people will potentially contract, potentially

spread the virus. But again, go back to that percentage being lower. We know without a shadow of a doubt that the economy will start to die and it will take decades to repair the longer that we're closed down. But again, I don't think anyone's trying to propose that like, Hey, I need to make money. So let's open this damn thing back up. And I don't care if people die. I don't think anyone's really actually, they're not really trying to say that they're just saying we're going to fucking die. Anyway, the Corona virus is here. Death sentences are for everybody, period. Like, you know, the moment you're born, you're going to die at some point. I heard some people to even talk about, and this is kind of a controversial thing, but

like I heard some people even talk about abortion. Like we live in a society where we kill millions of people, you know, for abortions. Like we knowingly kill a lot of, you know, and that's, again, that's sometimes religion plays into this. Sometimes different people have different opinions on abortion. Right. But it's like, okay, well, we're knowingly killing people over here. But now if we go outside of our house, you're trying to claim that I'm knowingly killing somebody in a similar way. It's like, are you fucking out of your mind? I'm not killing somebody because I'm not wearing a mask. You know, I think the mask thing is the ultimate virtue signaling thing of all time, because I don't feel like they do

anything, but I will still wear them. I'm not going to not wear them because I don't give a fuck about people. I'm going to wear them when I go into any situation where you're supposed to wear them. I'm going to follow the rules. I'm not going to, I'm not going to be the crazy old guy on, on, uh, you know, I'm not going to be a crazy Karen and start yelling at people about, you know, wearing a mask or not wearing a mask or whatever, but it's just, we're just in a really, uh, we're in a situation and people can disagree with that. And I'm fine with that. And it's OK. But I think that 50 percent of the information can show you how great masks are. And I think 50 percent of the information can show you that masks don't do anything. It's my understanding this would have been a great question for Dr. Sagner or maybe for a future guest that masks masks even in hospitals don't help with viruses they

help with bacterial infection so i'd have to get more information to 100 get more clarity on that but that's some of my understanding on that yeah i can send probably a follow-up email and ask him that question and then in a future episode you can yeah we'll we'll uh see what he says it's so funny that you when you say oh we're gonna die anyway like that's just the truth or people are going to die anyway from this right it's just slowing it down it's still like viscerally it's still such a hard thing to hear like when you hear you're just like ah shit damn ah yeah but you're but you're right like it's just and people are gonna have a problem with you saying that but it's like it's it's honestly inevitable like the amount of people that are gonna die from this thing it's it's gonna still happen you know so yeah and i mean you think

about like there's you know there's wars that we've been fighting for decades you know so yeah and i mean you think about like there's you know there's wars that we've been fighting for decades you know that we don't we know people are dying from that you know but like we need to uh secure our oil so we don't fucking care about you know like there's just there's there's always these situations in life that are going to be, uh, hard to figure out. Um, but you know, I think the main thing is to always go back to what do we know? What, what do we know? And what can we do? How can we assist? How can we help? I keep hearing people over and over again saying there's a lack of leadership. There's a lack of leadership. Well, be a leader, you know, lead people.

It's okay. No one ever told you that you're not allowed to be a leader. You can lead people. You can assist people. You can gain more information. You can become stronger. You can help people. You can assist people. So just do the best you can to when your mom or somebody sends you this stuff, you know, or your friend sends you something stupid, just say, Hey, don't send that shit to me because I don't think any of that's true.

You know, or you could even just say, Hey, you know what? I don't, I don't, I don't want you to send me that because I don't like seeing that amount of news. I found it to be pretty negative for me. And maybe they'll just kind of be like, huh? Like maybe, maybe I should watch a little less of that myself. know yeah yeah people should try yeah people need to be careful about being born because there's a 100 chance that you will die someday watch out i like it yeah it's a good practice though honestly like i can't remember who which type of uh whatever you want to call it but they would um do this practice where they would actually remind themselves five times a day that they're gonna die

and when you do this practice you kind of all of a sudden stop caring about like the little shit that doesn't really matter because if you say damn i could be gone tomorrow do i really really want to throw a fit at Walmart because I have to wear a mask right now? It's like, I don't want to be remembered for that YouTube video. So I think what... Yeah, a lot of that comes from a stoic philosophy of the Black Plague was going around.

And Marcus Aurelius, he would say to his children before he went, well, he would say it to himself before he went well he would say it to himself as he kissed his children good night the story goes that he would say they could be gone tomorrow so i should enjoy right now because the plague was so i mean i think it wiped out like 70 percent of 70 percent yeah 70 percent of the population at the time, I think, if I remember correctly. That's just absolute insanity. But I do think it's a good idea, too. Do you have people? Do you know people that are in their 60s and 70s?

If you do, you should recognize that they could be compromised, especially if they're getting out, especially if they're doing things. It sucks. But, you know, I've I've walked through what it looks like for my mom to die. I walk through what it looks like for my dad to die. But I've pretty much been doing that since my brother died because my brother died so young. So morbid shit, not always fun to do. But as we also learned from previous guests who wrote a book about this topic,

what was it like? Tea Time with the Reaper. Breakfast with the – what is it? Tea Time with the Reaper. Oh, yeah, Tea Time with the Reaper, yeah, from our buddy Derek. These are all things that you should think about. With the Reaper, yeah. From our buddy Derek. These are all things that you should think about. You know, if you want to think about like what, you know, if someone does die, what happens next?

You know, if your mom dies, who takes care of your dad? Or if your dad dies, who takes care of your mom? Or, you know, where does the house go? Where does the shit go? You know, where does the house go? Where does the shit go? Like, has anybody communicated about a will or does anybody know of anyone's financial situations? I know that we've had family members die in the past and we didn't have any idea that their finances were all like upside down and way different than we thought. And you're just like, oh shit. oh shit and it it it didn't leave the person uh that was left behind didn't leave them with anything and you're like fuck you know but you could have solved the problem uh while they were around and somebody could have maybe uh communicated that with them especially if they're compromised or especially if they're in bad health or especially if there's a virus, uh, going around. Yeah, no, seriously. After that, after that podcast, I,

I've gotten a lot of stuff dealt with after we had that bad episode. I think that was one of the most impactful episodes that, uh, made me make some changes. So, um, yeah, if you guys, or if you guys, yeah, you guys listening right now, go find that episode, uh, with Derek. And I think it's like type in tea time with the Reaper or something. I don't know. I don't know what episode number it is, but it's a good one to listen to. It's there somewhere. Yeah. I know he'll, he'll still like drop me a text. Like,

so have you had that conversation? And it's been hard because we thought we weren't going to be with my dad, you know? So I'm like, that's the person I need to talk to. And I just, he'll text me and I'm just like, fuck dude, I'm working on it. All right. And he's like, Hey, it could be tomorrow. Like, God dang it, man. Like, all right, all right, all right. So yeah, that's, I still need to do that. Yeah. It's a weird thing, right? So, uh, what's the deal with your will? yeah it's a weird thing right so uh what's the deal with your will how much of this house do you own you know i mean like yeah and i mean he's like he's an old schooler but like you know even for like life insurance you know he doesn't want or he didn't want to get it because he's like well

when you sign up for it that means you're expecting it and i don't want to expect like you know you like kind of like you're opening yourself up to it yeah yeah so yeah it's yeah all right and you take us on out of here buddy all right thank you everybody for checking out today's episode thank you to pete montes b for sponsoring today's episode for more information on them please check the youtube and facebook description as well as the podcast show notes please make sure you follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB power project on Twitter. We're also on LinkedIn and again,

Facebook. My Instagram is at, I am Andrew Z and Seema. Where are you at? I'm Seema Inyang on Instagram, YouTube and Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark. I just want to clear it up that when we were talking about fat power

lifters, I can't breathe. They weren't, he, Dr. up that when we were talking about fat powerlifters that can't breathe, Dr. Sagner wasn't directly talking about me. He was talking about Encema. Encema used to be really, really, really fat. No, just kidding. He may have been talking about it. I felt attacked a little bit.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you all later.