Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 355: Shawn Stevenson- Sleep Expert & Bestselling Author

Episode Date: August 29, 2016

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin interview Shawn Stevenson, bestselling author of Sleep Smarter and creator of The Model Health Show, featured as the #1 Nutrition and Fitness podcast on iTunes. A graduate of The University of Missouri – St. Louis with a background in biology and kinesiology, Shawn went on to be the founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a successful company that provides Wellness Services for both individuals and organizations worldwide. Shawn is also a dynamic keynote speaker who has spoken for TEDx, universities, and numerous organizations with outstanding reviews. Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you with a new video on our new YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic and the Butt Builder Blueprint (The RGB Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get your Kimera Koffee, Mind Pump's first official sponsor, at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Hey, we'd make a good, like a good boy band. We would. Yeah, like you come out and be like, what's up girl? And then I'd be like, hey girl. Yeah.

And then I'd be like, and then I'd be like, and then I'd be like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then be more like, and then song and then I'm gonna be more like I'm not sure how successful that's right. I forgot that I'm out of can't see Yeah, I'm the guy really stop. He's seeing so bad. It sounds like he's just a guy in the back That's pretty and just kind of moves. Yeah, yeah, he can't dance either. What's what do they call it a flyboy? Or whatever I just be like what makes you think I can't dance move?? He's the flyboy. You said it like 10 times on our show. That's me being humble, bro. That's me being humble, bro. Let's feel it.

I don't want any expectations. You know what? I don't know. I'm a fucking, he's over-delivered. I have a fucking dancing machine. I have a, don't see if you lie on the podcast. Yeah, I know.

Someone's gonna see you in person and dance. I'm not trying to show off. Although I will say that I do need a couple drinks, I mean. Right. Maybe you think you dance because you're hammered. This could be true. That could also be it. Yeah, no.

Hey, listen, the episode you're about to listen to, the interview you're about to listen to. Awesome. Probably one of my, if not my favorite interview. Not to take away from any of the guests we've had on before, but this guy rarely do I talk to people that I want, I wish I had a pen and paper to take notes. Luckily, it's recorded so I can listen

to it over and over again. You're gonna hear us talking to Sean Stevenson, who's the author of a book called Sleep Smarter, and he's also the host of a podcast called Model Health Show. Now, a lot of his philosophies, mirror, a lot of what you hear us here on Mind Pump talk about, except he's super, super smart. He goes into depth about sleep, which is something that admittedly...

He's got an amazing story. Amazing story. 20 years old, getting a bomb, dropping on this guy. Just great information. Again, one of my favorite interviews that we've done, you're gonna learn a lot and he's very compelling. He's very, very good on podcasts. Obviously, he has his own podcast.

You can find him on the Model Health Show, you can check out his website, sleepsmarterbook.com, and without further ado, here is Sean Stevenson. Tell us a little bit about your background. Sean, what got you into doing what you're doing now, writing this book on sleep and having a health and wellness podcast? Sure, sure. I definitely had no aspirations of being in the health of fitness field. I wasn't something that I'm a little kid and I'm like,

when I grow up, I wanna, you know, I wanna write a book. I wasn't like that. It was, I did go to school pre-med because I had this idea that I should be a doctor just because it's something that sounds good. But I hate, I literally hated science. I hated it.

And it's so ironic because today, I'm intimately deeply in love with it. And it's so ironic because today, I'm intimately deeply in love with it. And it's because in school, it's the way that we're taught. You know, it was for me, I'm a very visceral person, very passionate, and there was no connection. And it was so abstract and outside of myself, all of this talk about cells

and the periodic table of elements. It didn't make it connect. All these well-many teachers connect with students on a visceral level. This is you. This is how you can change your life. That's what really, when you talk about science, that's what it's really about. So I got out of that when I went to college pretty quickly. I think it was like midway through my second semester,

so I just can't take this anymore. And I switched over to marketing. And that was because I saw Boomerang movie with Eddie Murphy. And Martin Royce. And he was like, in marketing, I was like, that looks good. I'll do that. All right.

That's the story behind my shows and my chosen field of work. But then say that, say head of the plans for me when I was 20, I diagnosed with this so-called incurable condition, this incurable bone and spine condition where the degenerative bone disease, degenerative disc disease, so basically my mineral density, bone density was just, it was very, very bad, it was very low. To the degree, my physician at the time said I had this fine of an eight-year-old person when I was 20. Wow.

And that's not good, you know. So that correlates with loss of function. Coralates with extraordinary pain being 20 years old and trying to do 20 year old stuff. And your back is just constantly in the state of it could break down any moment. And so that was a pretty low point in my life, obviously getting that diagnosis and the fact that he said there's nothing you could do about this is insurable. And long story short, two and a half years went by with me buying into that.

And one thing that I want people to walk away with for sure is the fact that I was smart enough at the time, even though I was not remotely close to me saying that I was smart, but I was smart enough to get a second and third opinion. So always, whenever you get that doomsday report, don't just listen to that person, they're a human, they're a person, seek out other counsel,

talk to other people. And I did, I was hard enough to do that. I actually saw four physicians total and taught people in their field. But they did, unfortunately, we have the same story for me, same diagnosis, and there's nothing that could be done. And so have been at years go by oh Sorry, I just said that must have been real tough once you get those second third fourth opinion. Oh shit

I'm saying thing 20 years old too. I mean talk about a bomb getting dropped on you that young Exactly man exactly and so at this point now this two and a half years go by and going through this and This is really when you hear that story over and over again. And at this point, I gained a bunch of weight. I was 50 pounds heavier. I was in this just debilitating pain to the degree. I was on all these medications. I couldn't sleep at night because just even changed

position, like a traumatic pain. It's a kind of like this lightning which shoot down my leg and obviously it wouldaked me up and so it was just suffering man suffering definitely I would say you know I don't like to throw the word around lightly but depression was definitely looming for me and just a loss of the sense of purpose and significance and it was very embarrassing because of me being an athlete prior to this to you know i didn't have my identity straight and uh... i was i was i was scared i was definitely i was scared of even getting up and moving around and i was wearing a back brace and just very very difficult time but here's the thing

this is this is the whole point of this is that when you hear that story over and over again you get a decision to make you know are you gonna buy wholeheartedly into that and just win or away or are you going to do something about it? And so most of us, whether it's trying to lose weight, trying to recover from a disease, trying to mend a relationship, it's very fluffy and kind of flaccid in our approach. It's like, well, I'll try. I hope this works. I wish this would happen. I wish somebody would help me. It's very disempowering. And it puts the power

outside of yourself. And you don't have any power outside of yourself. And so for me, the whole key when everything changed for me after those a couple of years was I actually made a decision within myself and it sounds so subtle but most of us never do that when you make a real decision you cut away the possibility of anything else but the thing you decide on that's what a real decision is the definition from Latin gaming from Cadi with me to cut you cut away all other decisions all of the possibilities and for me I made the decision to get well,

and to be a healthiest person on the planet. That was the goal. And so, and it doesn't come coupled with like a rough-to-magic lamp, or like the clouds parted into magic happening. It was from a very analytical person. And so I put a plan together. Wasn't gonna happen on its own.

And that plan in tail three things, got nutrition component, movement, and improving my sleep quality. And that's kind of the secret sauce. And my, the transformation that happened, which everybody, who knows about me, of course, I'm assuming some people who even listen to your show might know about me, but you would check it out, of course, they've seen me online. But I was able to, number one, first six weeks, I lost 28 pounds. I completely reversed the degeneration over a course of age senior online, but I was able to number one, first six weeks, I lost 28 pounds. I completely reversed the degeneration over a course of nine months when I got a scan done. So I lost three, fourth of an inch in my height, duty degeneration, I gained

half an inch back. So I literally grew when I wasn't supposed to. The juiciness in between the vertebrae and my spine, my spinal disc came back. I retracted two-hurning disc that happened as well. My L4 and L5S1 vertebrae. All this stuff happened in the course of nine months. And so that was a burden in my career. Since then, while I was in college, I shifted everything back to biology and kinesiology learning, everything I could about health.

But I'll tell you guys this, and we can talk more about this during the show, but I was wildly misseducated in school. I already had my perspective different, so I'm taking it for what it was worth in the classes. And so I graduated, I opened my own practice, clinical nutritionists, to work with thousands of patients over the years, even started while I was in school. I was working with my professors, were my clients, fellow students, and that was when I was 22 years old was, you know,

and this is, well, you know, this is 15 years I have gone by and working in that every day with a very passionate approach because when somebody tells you that you can't do a thing that something's incurable and you actually do turn that thing around and you cure that thing or you do that thing They say you can't do you're in a very powerful position So I have people coming to me that said you know, I've stayed for cancer. They said I'm not going to make it. I have You know, I've typed to that beauty. I have a blood sugar over 400 I'm not supposed to be walking around and being able to see success with those people because I didn't give up on them

You know, put me in a very powerful position. So in that led to books and the speaking events all over the place and the show, you know, the model health show, very fortunate, grateful to say we've been the number one health podcast in the country, number one and finished nutrition, does it, does it at times and on iTunes and here I am today with you guys. in iTunes and here I am today with you guys. So I got to ask you, it's, sleep is not one that a lot of people talk about. What point did you realize that this was such an important piece?

I mean, of course nutrition, of course working out. I mean, that's, people know that. But a lot of people neglect to realize how important sleep is in this whole, what drew you to that? And how did you come across it or what made you start diving? Because you named those three things as far as the importance for you and going after that. How did you know to do that?

I know you were kind of going through schooling that way, but what really inspired you to go that direction? Sure, yeah. So personal experience firsthand, I didn't know what I was doing at the time when I was able to recover my health, I just went to going to food with food. I simply started making my own food and getting better quality and greenness. I was just straight eating fast food every day. I was in college.

Your body requires raw materials in order to generate itself and eat them. I wasn't getting any of that stuff in. Like, some of the delight doesn't have, you know, polysaccharides. And, you know, I'm shit, really. So, preparing, I mean, yeah, it's just going to pull it out of it. So, but that was one component and also assimilation. This is why exercise is actually so important. It's assimilation and elimination. It helps you do assimilate nutrients.

And I had studies to confirm that. I put that actually in the book one, the kind of first studies I came across. And then the third component was the sleep. And what was so crazy is that over the course of this time when I was dealing with this issue, my sleep was so horrible. And here's a bottle I wanted to headlines for today is If you're not sleeping, you're not healing You know, this is when your body actually has the greatest anabolic programs running So these are anabolic anabolism building up growth development regeneration being awake is catabolic

In and of itself it doesn't matter if you're just sitting there watching Game of Thrones you're you're in a cat state, the body's breaking down a little bit faster. And so if you're not getting ample time in that regeneration and retard state, you're losing, you're literally losing. And so for me, I was number one, I was getting pseudo sleep because it was a medicated sleep. So you're not naturally actually going through all of the stages. That's what really, well really my work has been about.

It's not about sleeping more. It's about getting efficient sleep and cycling through your sleep cycles properly. Because you can get eight or nine hours of straight up junk sleep and wake up feeling horrible and tired all day. And a lot of people do that. And so what I found was that things I would do during the day, paid off greater dividends when I laid down on my pillow at night. So another headline is a great night of free starts the moment to wake up in the morning. So me getting up and moving again, getting exercise early in the day,

I was one of the catalysts. And so Apple Hsia State University with a study and they found that morning exercises. So when they put people in through their three-year phases to test this, 7 a.m., 1 p.m., 7 p.m., morning exercises, spend more time in deep, anabolic sleep. They had more efficient sleep cycles, they tended to sleep longer and then a 25% greater drop in the blood pressure at night, which correlates with the activation of the paracentanthetic nervous system, which is their quote, rest in digest system.

So I was doing this, I didn't know at the time. I didn't know about this study until 10 years later. I did that, I was getting more sunlight, which clinically proven this is, I had several studies aside, and some of them actually getting sunlight on the early part of the day, the lower it's a quarter-salt at night,

of getting more access to that. I was eating more good sleep nutrients. And this is one of the things I'm really pressing into. The major media and the public at large is that, you know, we have to also address our gut health. She's deeply connected to gut, sleep brain connection. God, love hearing. Love hearing you say that, man.

Very, very few people talk about gut health and it's one of the things that we touch a lot on Yes, and The correlation to sleep is just mind blowing most of your melatonin is 400 times more melatonin in your gut being in your brain Okay, so that whole atmosphere and that microbiome matters a lot And so I was unknowingly consuming all these powerful, basically precursors to sleep-related hormones. You know, to set the sand, potassium, even there's melatonin in certain foods like cherries, for example.

So I'm consuming all these good sleep nutrients and when I get started to sleep, so much better was a result of what I was doing while I was awake. And so now all of a sudden I'm doing great sleep. I'm going to bed earlier because I'm actually tired because I was doing while I was away. And so now all of a sudden I'm doing great. So even going to bed earlier because I'm actually tired because I was doing stuff for myself, which was totally different concept versus playing at a football all day. So that's really where I was at, man.

And that's phase one, really quickly phase two was, all of that just became in my blind spot because I was sleeping great all of those years working with other people. I didn't think about it. I didn't think to ask anybody about it. I knew how I felt when I didn't get great sleep and I didn't like it. So I just made sure that I did everything in my power to get great sleep. For my patients, it took about seven years before I started to ask you about the sleep quality. And it was because we might have had 80% success rate for helping people with hypertension

and high blood pressure to get off of things like statins and placenta prille, things like that. But there was 20% of people who didn't get the result. And they were doing the same thing as everybody else, what's the problem. And so I started to ask them about other things. I started to ask them about their stress, sleep, relationships, work, other things that matter for your health and who you are.

And I could not believe. I had to put my hand under my chin and I have my jaw dropped on my desk. I started hearing about people in the sleep habits who just like, what? I was even alive, I used to hear. Well, you know Sean, you said something really interesting a few moments ago about pseudo sleep. And I think this is a great example of how Western medicine tends to approach problems.

So we go to the doctor and we're like, God, I feel horrible because I'm getting bad sleep. And so what Western medicine does is it tries to get you to sleep more by treating your sleep. When in reality, it's more of a symptom of bad health, poor diet, lack of activity, poor gut health, you know, emotional issues. And so my question is, you know, good sleep contributes to good health and good health contributes to good sleep.

So it almost, you can't separate them at all. It almost feels like I think we place all of the, because although you're talking about sleep and it's not the sexiest topic in fitness, I think people just, you know, sometimes when they think asleep they're like, oh, I just need to go to sleep. And that'll make everything better. When it's all inversely related. When it looks like it tends to be, they're related, you know, back and forth where if I just get sleep, that's not really, you know, solving the situation. It's many times it's a symptom of the real problem, which is my poor health during the day.

So, and, you know, you made a real good point of pointing that out, and I just wanted to do it again, so that our listeners can make sense of it, because I know I have a lot of people who will talk to me, maybe like, you know, I get really bad sleep, you know, maybe if I, you know, take this herb or I try this, you know, supplement and then I'll get better sleep and I'll feel so much better when it's almost like they're just, they're just treating the symptom, which is so indicative of, of, of Western medicine. You know, we, you know, you got a headache, take a pill that makes the headache go away, but don't do anything that's, uh, to, to stop what's causing that headache in the first place. Well, you mentioned two, you, you you mentioned uh... shan the

cherries and stuff what about things like uh... camo mail or you a fan of stuff like that yeah you know this is something i felt there's a little bit like pulling my arm to do it but uh... in-free smart service twenty one strategies almost left out talking about supplementation because my practice that would be one of the first questions that a lot of people would ask, what

can I take for? What can I take for fat laws? What can I take for more energy? What can I take to improve my sleep? And it's still kind of that allopathic mindset of taking a pill for every ill. You know, taking a pill to try to cover a symptom, and I didn't like it. So my approach was always food first, lifestyle first.

Supplements can make maybe a 1% to 5% difference, but that can be valuable, but you have to have those other pieces bowed in. But I did, and I started with things that have been used historically for a long time. All right. Camelmill has been documented use for over 2,000 years. All right. Effective, clinically proven to be effective for things ranging from improving circulation, improving blood pressure, all the way to improving sleep quality, and helping to activate that

parasympathetic tone that we talked about earlier. So, chamomiles, a good one, there's the laryon, there's kava kava, things like the National Drink of Fiji, they've been using that for thousands of years, you know, versus ambion that was made at the laboratory like 10 years ago, you know, synthetic literally has no essence or connection with anything to do with human physiology. So it's basically you're an experiment, even if they've done clinical trials, which is clinical trials, if you look into it, it's pretty messed up. I pretty messed up, baby, could put it out there in the market, but that's a whole, let's not get into the whole FDA thing, it to the whole fda it's a whole of the kind of conversation but i'm on the line of the on feel free to talk shit bro it's okay you're on the

right show for that ruffle fellers all day you guys already know man it's it's really about uh... lobbyists really you know that whole story of follow the dollar but uh... there are a lot of very very unsafe things on the market if you look at if you just go to dr google and look at how many drugs are pulled off of the market every month, that were deemed safe, that straight killed people. I don't know if people know this, but, and again, just go to Dr. Google, check it out. Iatrogenesis. You guys know about Iatrogenesis? No.

Okay, so Iatrogenesis, at one point, was a third leading cause of death in our country. Right? But what the hell is it like? I extra-what? What is this? I extra means physician. Genesis means created. Okay, so, tradition created death.

So we're talking about poorly prescribed medications, unnecessary surgeries, medical accidents, things like that. Third leading cause of death at one point, within the last 10 years. But nobody's talking about that. And these are great listens. I have so many of my really, really good friends. As yesterday I was talking to one of them, like, you know, large chunk of the day, Dr. Michael Bruce. He's a quote America sweet doctor and amazing friends of mine will physicians.

But I've got to tell you this and they'll tell you the real good ones will tell you. Number one, when you go to college, you're taught pharmacology, all right? That's the track you're taught about disease and how to treat illnesses, treat symptoms. I and how to treat symptoms with medication. Very, very, very small percentage. We're talking about in the 1-5 range, just like with how much self-alumination work, 1-5

range of talking about lifestyle adjustments, mostly trained on surgery, pharmacology. Now, with that said, with that approach, if those are your two weapons, what are you going to do when somebody comes to see you for headache? You can use those hair to use your headache. You got a hammer, everything's a nail. Exactly. You're not going to be like, you need to make sure that you're drinking water, you're getting adequate sunlight, you're how it's your sleep quality, plus the time

constraints. You know, this is an undervalued market, even though people are like, even me when I was a kid and I was like, okay, I'm going to be a doctor, it's like, oh, that's a nice six-figure salary, whatever. It's not really like that. A lot of, to make that type of money, most doctors have to work in sane hours, all right? And that's a problem. That's a real big problem.

Here's another thing that's not talked about with these really good people because nine times out of ten, they're very altruistic and they want to get into this field to help people. But the system has failed them. So we're looking at a situation where, and I had the opportunity working at a university. I worked with many pre-med students, many many many nurses over the years. There was a physician study, this was published in the land fit. This was a study on physicians. They actually monitored physicians. They had them to come in, they completed a task. They monitored their results. To lead the private event for just 24 hours, having to complete the same path again.

They made 20% more mistakes and it took them 14% longer to do the same exact thing. 24 hours is normal in the world of different physicians, depending on what their specific field of specialization is. And so I don't want that person making that mistake on me, that 20% grade, or one of my family members, you know, they're asleep to drive. They're not able to take good care of themselves. Another thing is, just to make that money that they need, that they work so hard for, they also have to, I don't even, well, obviously, sometimes they got to cut corners. You know, sometimes they got a cut corners you know sometimes they got a cut corners prescribed medication just for the

person just so they don't have to deal with it well the system and yeah system totally encourage the system encourages it i mean you when you're you're a doctor look we work i work in fitness and i see a lot of people who've been to physical therapists and physical therapists uh... you know the insurance covers them to get back range of motion, but not to bring them back to where they were before that,

to get them back to strength within that range of motion. And so people come to me and they're like, oh, I had this surgery, I did all the physical therapy and I watched their function and it's horrible. And it's the system, the system encourages doctors doing that. And like you said, they're very altruistic by nature, but once you get in a system that tells you what to do and how to do it, and if you don't,

then you can't make a living. And you're relying a lot on the technology too, which fails too, which my wife's a nurse as well. And there's situations that occur where a reading for glucose is too high. And unless they catch that, somebody's life is at stake. So they're applying medications for that.

You get your 8 to 12 weeks of therapy and then your bottle of pills, see you later. I totally agree, man. Even when I'm saying cutting corners, the main thing that pops up in my mind is the fact that instead of finding the right answer, they just don't because of time. They don't have the time to look into the latest research, to actually understand what's going on with the whole booming field of nutrigenomics and looking at how every molecule food that you eat impacts your genetic expression. Nobody's talking about that stuff, but to be able, if you're true, you know, the word doctor, you know, I'm sorry, physician really means teacher, you

know, the root of the word. And being somebody who has the time to scrub and to coach and to teach rather than just being somebody who is a dictator and just telling you what to do. The best physicians are a part of your team. So what I want to encourage people to do, I didn't know we talked about this today, is to take back that ownership of your own body. You know, you were the first line of everything. You know, not with somebody else outside of you says, it should be there to partner with you,

not to tell you what to do. You know, a lot of us, do you especially when you're hurting, you just want somebody to save you. You want somebody to tell you what to do, but you have to keep your width about you because you can make a decision that haunts you for the rest of your life or makes your life a whole lot shorter. Well, this is why we wanted you to be on our show because you're echoing a lot of what we talk about, which unfortunately a lot of people, you know, don't talk about, which unfortunately a lot of people don't talk about, especially in the industry of medicine and then in fitness and health, which fitness and health tends

to be driven by cosmetic and not so much, it's working out, right? It's not working in. That people talk about. There was a couple of things that you brought up that wanted to touch upon. You talked about things like chamomile and kava and valerian and how they've been used for thousands of years. And, you know, it reminds me of a few other examples that I encountered.

No, I have two children. And, you know, inevitably they'll get sick every once in a while and you're bringing them to the doctor and the doctor will then say something like, oh, you know, give them some, some them some honey and some warm water because that helps a cough. Now, here's what's interesting. It wasn't that long ago that doctors laughed at people giving honey for to help with a

cough. They said that was, that's baloney. There's no scientific evidence to prove it. Although people have been eating honey for thousands of years to treat a cough. And now finally, science is catching up and showing that there's something in honey that actually tells the brain to suppress cough a little bit. And it's interesting because you see this with lots of traditional medicines and therapies. Another good example is fasting.

Probably 10, 15 years ago, the industry of the medical industry and the health industry laughed at fast thing and said, no, fast thing, there's no health benefits, it's baloney, that's hippie stuff. And now science is starting to catch up a little bit. And so, we are taught that anecdote isn't reliable and it isn't in a lot of cases. But when you have thousands and thousands of years It isn't in a lot of cases, but when you have thousands and thousands of years of culture and tradition and evidence that this particular herb was consumed by the Chinese for 10,000 years to treat menstrual cramps, and although we don't have science yet supporting it, that's 10,000 years. People aren't going to do things necessarily for that long and document it that much if there isn't something to support it.

And not only that, but you look at thousands and thousands of years of use. You start to figure out how safe something is and how safe it may not be. Oh, versus our studies right now, which are done over six months, right? They give them a drug and say, oh look, these guys were fine for six months.

Well yeah, what happens when you take that fucking drug for the next five years? How does the change your chemistry here? Or 30 years. I mean, look at, look at some of the things that we consume on a regular basis. I mean, they do studies on artificial sweeteners and they're like, oh, you know, we tested these on animals and, you know, humans for, you know, six months to a year. And, but I know people who drink, people who drink one or two diet sodas every day for 20 years, or 30 years.

And then the other thing you touched upon was epigenetics and how we are taught that our genes are set, the way they are expressed or set that we go to the doctor because we have a health problem. And the doctor is gonna say, well, high blood pressure runs in your family, high cholesterol runs in your family, or, you know, oh, you know, multiple sclerosis runs in your family. So we're just going to have to treat it with this medicine. And now realizing that our lifestyle really impacts and we're and the evidence now is pretty,

pretty substantial. Really impacts how our genes are expressed. So just because you have the gene that says that you're preded, that you might, you have a higher chance of getting something, doesn't mean you can influence it with your lifestyle to change it. And not only that, but there's some science showing how you live impacts your children.

You know, like not even while you're pregnant, just what you did for the years before you got pregnant and how their genes may be expressed. So maybe maybe if you want to kind of go into epigenetics a little bit and some of the stuff that you've you found. Okay, yeah, sure, this is this is the most exciting. I mean, I remember watching Dr. Bruce Lipton, who's really the foremost expert in my opinion on epigenetics as far as his communication to the public and making this well-known. And people should check out Violet Deal's belief in his book. But I watched a lecture that he gave. And I mean, I'm just like holding back tears. And I'm not like, I'm not that it's a big deal to not cry,

but I don't really, I don't, I'm not a cry person. It just doesn't, it doesn't really happen that often. But I was like holding back tears because of how, how amazing this life really is structured and how it just kind of hit me how we've lost touch with reality, you know? And the fact that all of these horrible things that so many people are experiencing

and myself included in seeing so many just catastrophic things even happen in my family, my grandmother, my grandfather who raised me, I grew up with them and their household. My grandfather having three open-heart surgeries, my grandmother dying from overdose on medication and, you know, these type of things, you know, just seeing this suffering. It's only people who are saying they bought into this idea that your genes, you have a

gene for something and you're predetermined to just have this happen. The reality is if you're not born with a true birth defect and we're predetermined to just have this happen. And the reality is if you're not born with a true birth defect, and we're talking about around 2% of the population, you know, less than that. If you're not born with a true birth defect, you get here with essentially a pretty good cellular output or cellular makeup. And if you're not born with cancer,

how does it happen later? How do I, I'm not, I wasn't born with this. Why do I have cancer now? And the answer is right there within the words I said, something happened, something changed. And so there are genes, we all have genes for cancer programs, we all have genes for cancer programs, we all have genes for diabetic programs, we all have genes for obesity.

For many of us though, it's a variation. My genetic predisposition was for the generation of my bones and my spine. My grandmother come to find out later, I don't even know this. She had the same issue. And that's my genetic predisposition. However, I have the opportunity because genes are essentially they're blueprint. It's a blueprint laid out for, okay, this is how things can be built. But the blueprint doesn't actually do anything. It's just a blueprint. Like if you go to somebody who's like building your house and look at the blueprint or whatever,

and you're like, okay, architect, what is this blueprint doing? You're probably gonna think you, you know, maybe you had too much of drink and it's only like 12 o'clock in the afternoon, like what the hell are you drinking for right now? And so because the gene, the blueprint doesn't do anything. It's just a blueprint,

it's instructions. It depends on who's reading the, is it getting read and is it being acted upon? That's what epigenetics looks at, okay? So epigenetics is epimening above, like epidermis, above the dermis, it's above genetic control. So what's been discovered is that there are thousands and thousands of things that influence which genes are getting red and getting acted upon. Again, every molecule of food that you eat with Neutrogenomics, every single molecule of food is having an impact on your genetic expression. So whether you're eating a bagel or eating a banana or you're eating some salmon, it's all going into what your genes are doing differently. This is why food matters. Not because we're

going to be fat as hell, we're going to be skinny, it's because of what it's doing to your genes. Also sleep. And so it was super fascinating. So I I cited a study in sleep smarter. Literally documenting the fact that sleep And so it was super fascinating. So I, I, said that sleep deprivation, in particular working shift works, so working overnight, has found to be a class 2A carcinogen. So that means that working overnight causes cancer. Carcinogen means cancer causing agents. That sounds totally ridiculous when you see it out loud. How can we be working the night shift cause cancer? It's the epigenetic trigger.

So again, that movement, exercise, stress, obviously is a huge player in that. You know, you could be like, I'm very stressed for you. I'm not stressed at my job. Most people think about work when it comes to stress. What about your relationship? What about your diet? What about exercise? Exercise comes to stress what about your relationship what about your diet what about exercise exercise of the stress are you doing the right kind of exercise for your body no they man you know all of these things are epigenetic triggers and uh... we all have immense power immense power regardless of what

uh... man this is it just i didn't know we're gonna get into this but regardless of what particular ideas come out in the media about, oh, you've got this particular gene for breast cancer, we need to go ahead and cut off your breast. And I've literally seen this firsthand. One of my clients back in the day, one of my patients, I worked with her very, very briefly. It was just actually a consultation. She had a lot of issues, a lot of stuff going on, and she really came in for her mother.

And her mother at this point had already had a double mastectomy, and also, I'm sorry, I talked about, and also radiation chemotherapy, she'd been through it. This is our fourth time getting cancer. And now they're with me. It's just like, what can they do? It's just, it's a very, very difficult situation because she was leaving here fast. Long story short, she was supposed to,

she only had like, I don't know, no exactly. Maybe 30 days to live or something in that ballpark, you know, six weeks, something like that. They were able to, I'm not going to say it was me, but they were able to prolong her life and she was here for another year and a half. Her daughter, they found that she had the gene for breast cancer and she had, you know, we've lost time. She was just kind of, you know, I gave them tools and, you know, they got some great results from it and they, you know, told a lot of people about me, recommended, you know, a lot of

people have followed my work and things like that. But we never talked about that thing. And she was so busy with her lifestyle, single mom, three kids. She didn't pay attention to everything. She was sending to her mom. She didn't pay attention to everything. She was sending to her mom. She didn't pay attention to it. And so she ended up getting her breasts removed because they found a gene for cancer.

She didn't have cancer. Perfectly healthy, beautiful woman. And because she was in fear, she had a breast removed. And here's the problem with that. Because it sounds like all that's a good idea. What you're doing, you're cutting away all those lymphatic glands. All right, these lymph nodes, better. These are the places, these are the hub, the training ground for your immune system.

All right, you're natural killer cells, white blood cells. And you start to lose those lymph nodes in this training ground for your immune system. Our immune system is what actually helps us. Everything will be because we all produce cancer cells. Your immune system stays on top of it if it's working right and it goes and destroys those cells. There's programs and it goes and destroys cancer cells. You start to break down your immune system, which is what chemotherapy is as well.

It's destroying the person immune system and cancer cells as well. It's very great. It's amazing at that. But it's just that it's going to see, can you last longer? Can you last longer than the cancer? And it's just not a great idea. Every tool, this is what makes me different in my practice, everything is an option. But we should get to that way down the line.

So again, just wanted to share that. I've seen it firsthand in how people can make pretty tremendous decisions, benefit their life for the rest of their life, and oftentimes shorten their life, and also people being empowered and finding out this information, and then getting a new connection with taking good care of themselves, that self-care, that self-love for not for the sake of a six pack, you know, six pack abs or flat belly, but for the sake of you being you. That's a, that's a very powerful message, Sean.

And you know, you saying that in terms of it's for you and not just for the six pack and the look and better and, you know, this is a message we talk about all the time It's funny because looking truly truly being healthy And well the side effect is what I think people aim for you know the side effect is oh I'm not obese Oh, I look you know good or I look attractive and I move well and I feel well But that's that's more of a side effect of being well and healthy versus, you know, just aiming for those, you know,

those cosmetic, cosmetic changes. I just recently got into this funny, we brought this up right now. I think it was just two days ago on Facebook, I did a post and it was about type two diabetes and I was kind of talking shit about all the fitness professionals out there that take these pictures of them with their abs

or they looked ripped and they got boxed donuts or cake or ice cream. And they're kind of, and I'm like, you know, if you had any idea what the message that you're fucking sending to our people that are battling obesity, that are battling this, you guys would never do this. It's like showing up to an AA meeting,

drinking a beer and you're there for a talk. That's the stupidest thing you could ever do, yet it's extremely popular in our industry. So I was kinda talking shit about that. Well, I attracted some lady on there who responded and she actually got really defensive and said, oh, I think anybody should eat pop tarts or ice cream or whatever they want.

I feel very okay with my image. And she turned it into this whole image thing, which I had talked nothing about that. It was about health, you know, and I said, you know, and I looked at her patient. Of course, she was overweight, extremely overweight. And she had turned this into a cosmetic thing. I said, you know, I think you misunderstood my message.

I said, I'm not trying to shame anybody here about how they look. This isn't about how you look. It's about how you live your life and quality of life and health and the message that these fitness people are sending is just outrageous. And we kind of went back and forth until I kind of got that through to her. But it's crazy to me, the way people think. And it's even crazier to me, the people that are leading this fitness industry that are out there that are, you know, showing the way of matured, very few people. And this is why we were so excited to have you on, Sean, is we, I mean, we did our homework on you. We knew, we knew what you stand for. We knew what you're out there talking about.

And there's very few of you. There's very few of you that are addressing gut health that are talking about sleep. They're talking about these all these unsexy topics that really fucking matter. Everybody wants to talk about six pack abs and being able to have pop tarts at the same time. And what pill to take and what's the newest supplement? To me, it's mind blowing, but super, it's super common, but it's extremely mind blowing that people don't consider what they put in their mouth.

They don't consider their lifestyle. They don't consider the thoughts that they have in their mind. People think that that, for some reason, that's not important. Like, oh, I feel horrible. Maybe it's the things I think about. Maybe it's my attitude. Maybe it's the people I let myself associate with.

Maybe it's the food I eat. I mean, of course it's gonna impact you. You eat food every single day. That food is, you know, I mean, if we really break it down, it's just chemical messages, you know, messages that your body interprets and then it, you know, it creates something from that.

So to me, it's mind blowing that people don't consider that first, that that's not the biggest impact that, that will impact you more than almost anything else you possibly do in terms of how you feel, chronic disease, anything. It's one of the oldest messages in medicine, right? Let food be that medicine. Well, he said something else that I thought

was really powerful too, which is, man, I was just talking to a lady the other day who was taking one of these super high-intensity type circuit classes. And ironically, the people that are most attracted to those classes are the people that shouldn't be taking those classes. A lot of people in Sean, you just mentioned that, you know, knowing what exercise is right for you. A lot of type A personality, high stress people are also attracted to the fucking worst exercise for them. They want this high intensity, slam your body, circuit type training. If those people should be doing fucking yoga,

those people should be meditating, right walking, exactly focusing on neat. Those people should be doing things like that, but yet they're doing a lot of people don't understand that, they don't understand the importance of that and how that affects us hormonally, how it affects our sleep, all those things. So I think that's a really good point

to elaborate on something that we deal with as trainers a lot. Now Sean, question about sleep. What is, what have they found to be, because I would assume that the way we sleep now is probably different than the way we slept when we were, you know, for most human civilization, I should say, you know, what is the best way,

what have they found the best way to sleep? Is it going to bed and getting eight hours? Is it sleeping less than having a nap? Is it, you know, going to bed when the sun goes down and waking up right when it comes up? Are they starting to determine now really the most ideal way to sleep for health? Wow. Yeah. So, first of all, this gets into conversation of where all different, you know, slightly,

slightly. We all still fall into the same realm where we, our genes expect us to have a natural light and dark cycle. That's what really governs our hormones and everything about us. When we're talking about weight loss or blood sugar or whatever the case may be, every of your blood pressure, your hormones increase, your testosterone, your progesterone, everything is working on a hormonal collapse. Your circadian timing, every single second of the day, it's working on that clock in tune

with nature. And the more that you get out of sync with what nature is doing, the more you're going to see problems happen. And what's so fascinating today is that we can radically disrupt nature because thanks to Thanks to our good friend Thomas Edison things have and I'm not you know, I love my iPhone I love my computer. I love having a light. What I think it's awesome You know movies. Oh come on man. We're in the golden age, but every show is good. I get it. I get it Netflix and chill is the phenomenon now the reality though is like what is this doing?

To our brains what is this doing to our physiology? What is it doing to our most right? We've never had access to this stuff And we'll just say that us having exposure to these things, to technology, is one page of the biggest bullet, we'll just use a dictionary, the thick size of a full dictionary. This is like half of a page in humanity that we have had technology like this. All of that other time, none of it. When it gets dark outside, you seek shelter because you're not the top of the food chain. That line can see you at night. You can't see it.

It's hunting right before the sun comes up and you're invited to breakfast, but not as a guest. We're not wired up for that. So we're seeking shelter. We're making sure that we, this is the time for us to regenerate and for us to be up during the day, we're day creatures.

And so this will be the time for us to hunt, to procure food, to build shelter, to tell stories, to commune, to have sex, to be around our tribe. This is how we're designed. With that said, sleep back in the day would depend slightly on your chronotypes still. It's more prevalent today though. The chronotypes kind of biological rhythm that we all have.

They're varied from person to person where for some people, they are naturally going to just want to rise earlier. Some people are going to want to stay up a little bit later, but it's still going to fall in that ballpark where everybody is getting the bed, surely thereafter it starts. Today we can manufacture a second daytime basically. We don't have to even, we don't have to acknowledge that it's nighttime. We don't have to acknowledge it. We can just totally ignore it. And your body doesn't know the difference. When you're surrounded

and you're in a room and it's midnight outside and you're, you've got all the lights on in your house, you're watching, you know, um, house of cars or whatever the case is. All of that information, especially that blue light spectrum, is of cars or whatever the case is, all of that information, especially that blue light spectrum, is sitting sitting with your brain, is telling your brain that it's daytime. And your body's like, hey, I thought it was daytime or whatever, I got to produce more cortisol. And this is going to disrupt your whole circadian timing.

And your ability again, you're going to end up getting that junk sleep, that pseudo sleep. And you go to sleep. You might physiologically be passed out in a concentrate hours, but so Harvard researchers found that for every hour that you're on your tech device in the evening, it's correlated with 30-minute suppression of melatonin. Oh, shit. All right. So even though, because a lot of people, the last thing they do is you turn off your tech and then you go to sleep.

Yep. Your melatonin is suppressed. So you're not going to get your normal sleep cycles. You're natural, anabolic, and non-rhymin, non-rhym sleep. It's going to be broken. It's going to be messed up. And so you're not going to feel recovered when you wake up in the morning. And you start the whole thing over again. So another big thing in the media today is just talk about segmented sleep, is what

was proposed to be something that we saw with early man. However, I'm sorry, the science is just not that sound, I'm sorry, it's just not. We do have that capacity for sure. I think it's definitely something that was seen culturally and there were times when that was seen so segmented sleep basically is where you go to sleep for three to four hours and you're up for maybe 30 minutes to an hour then you have a second sleep after you four hours. That could be healthy, that can be helpful for some people however this is the key.

You have to go to bed early enough that you have time during the night to do that. And also I'm pretty sure that early man didn't get up 10,000 years ago for their first waking up in between the segments of sleep and they got on their iPhone. They didn't do that. You know, just get up, maybe eat a little something, have sex, maybe do some meditation, thinking about the life where they want one to do pray that kind of thing today it's a whole different ballgame you know but

uh... having great uh... uninterrupted sleep is something that is really going down to matter of having a phishing hormone cycles and of course is something i talk a lot about in flea smarter this what it's really about it's leaping smarter not necessarily sleeping more but finding ways to get more efficient sleep cycles. I'm very, very glad you said you made an emphasis on smarter because when you look at studies of people who sleep the most, they've also got horrible health.

But I think people, you know, because we're not good at reading studies, right? We see the headline and we think, oh, looks like if you sleep too much, you have bad health. But the reality is people with really bad health sometimes sleep all day, you know, they also have, so I think it's important that you emphasize the smarter part because just being knocked out doesn't necessarily mean you're getting the benefits of sleep. Plus we touched on that, he touched on that earlier. I mean, the majority of those people that are probably sleeping all day long are fucking super medicated, right? I mean, they're probably the reason why they're sleeping there in chronic pain and they're

taking, vikin' in all day long and all this other shit, you know, an ambian and such. You know, I'm glad you said that, Adam. Here's a question that might hit a little close to home. So what, because sleep is a subject that you're very, very well versed in, what about the impact of cannabis marijuana on sleep? I know it helps a lot of people sleep. I know, medicinal people use it for that.

Does it take away from the quality of sleep? Can it make, is it something that you should use as a last resort to help you sleep? Or is it a good thing? This could be a whole show on its own, man. We're getting here to the close of the show. Yeah, so what's so interesting is being in clinical practice and being so progressive and looking at the opportunity to work with so many different patients and different things like I've worked with

Man, I mean everything from the the usual things you see today like that be cancer All I mean so many different forms of cancer all the way to rare things you might not have even ever heard of like Rocky Mountain fever Like what the hell is that is that that's a real thing? You know, and so I've had patients that have come in that are struggling because of their addiction to marijuana, their addiction to be able to help them to sleep, they cannot sleep without it. That's the problem area. That's, this is one of those things you have to be careful with, you have to be conscientious of. you know this particular uh... guy who's

incredible student uh... uh... summa cum laude the whole thing and he was getting by if he didn't if he didn't get high right before bed he was getting maybe two to four hours of sleep is the only thing that can really in his mind so we had to do some a change in his new association we had to do quite a few things that to free him up from that you know that's kind of like the only thing he didn't

like that it was controlling him so we don't want that to be the thing that's that that's the first part second part is yes is effective alright uh... we're looking at something potentially changing what's going on with your estrogen estuary sectors

uh... switch to your paracetamidetic nervous system. For a lot of people, even at classes, smoking, they're finally taking a deep breath. What a concept. There's a lot of little hidden side of things. But the CBD is really getting a lot of publicity today and all of the medicinal effects and benefits. And I just encourage people to just do your research. Just do your research.

Don't just go and do something because, you know, you might... The fear of the thing is a good idea. Anything I talked about, please double-check me. You know, don't just listen to me. But I think it can definitely be something that can be added to a lifestyle in a cute situation. It's not something habitually done. I don't want to see that happen,

but depending on any substance, but something in spot treatment or for short-term use here or there, I think it'd be definitely effective. Well, Sean, it's been a pleasure having you on the show, man. You great message, amazing information. I think, we're gonna need to have to do this at least another time or two for sure. I think they're really gonna appreciate some of the stuff that you've communicated.

So it's been great having you on. It's my pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me. Let him. Thank you, sir. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check

out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps on a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundles like having style, and the Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee, and you can get it now plus

other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time this is MindPump. This is MindPomp.