Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Sal Di Stefano on Gut Health, HPA Axis Dysfunction, Mindful Eating, and More…

Episode Date: December 1, 2017

In this episode, I interview my buddy Sal from the hugely popular Mind Pump Podcast, which he hosts with Adam and Justin, and which you should definitely check out. I wanted Sal to talk about three topics that he’s particularly revved up about recently, and that’s gut health, overcoming systemic fatigue, and using mindful/intuitive eating strategies over more rigid, planning/tracking-based strategies. Here’s a little sneak peek of what we talk about in today’s interview: - What “leaky gut” is and how it can affect your body. - How artificial sweeteners can harm our gut health, and how that can in turn affect many aspects of our health and wellness. - What “HPA/HPAT Axis Dysfunction” is, why many people are suffering from it, and what you can do to beat it. - Some of Sal’s favorite mindfulness practices. - And more… 4:59 - Why is the health and wellness space flooded with bad information? 11:53 - How are anecdotes accelerating medical research? 19:04 - What is leaky gut? 22:47 What are glyphosates and how do they affect our bodies? 29:00 - How do Artificial Sweeteners affect our body? 31:22 - What is HPA/HPAT Axis Dysfunction and what are its symptoms? 37:16 - What can you do to reverse HPA/HPAT Axis Dysfunction? 42:21 What is intuitive eating? 48:09 - What is the repeated exposure effect? 1:01:59 - How does the central nervous system affect our workouts? 1:05:09 - What is mindful eating? 1:10:20 - What are some of your personal mindfulness practices? 1:12:30 - What are the studies behind the breathing technique? 1:13:17 - Where can everybody find your work? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

we're finding that your microbiome is important for all of your health. I mean, if you were to count all of the bacteria cells that you have in and on your body, they would outnumber your human cells. That's literally how many there are. So we're like, you can safely say you're more bacteria than human just from a cell number basis. Boys and girls, boys and girls, this is Mike with Muscle for Life, another episode of the podcast. And this time I interview my buddy Sal from the hugely popular Mind Pump podcast, which he hosts with Adam and Nathan, in which you should definitely check out. They're cool guys. They had me on the show recently. I flew out to California and got to hang out with them and I like what they're doing. So give them a listen. Now in this podcast,

I wanted Sal to talk about a few topics that he is particularly revved up about these days, and that is gut health, overcoming systemic fatigue, or what many people call chronic fatigue and using mindful slash intuitive eating strategies over more rigid planning slash tracking types of strategies. And here is a little sneak peek of what we talk about in this interview. We talk about what leaky gut is and how it can affect your body. We talk about how artificial sweeteners can harm our gut health and how that in turn can affect many other aspects of our health and wellness. We talk about what HPA slash HPA T axis dysfunction is and why many people out there are suffering from it without realizing it and also what you can do to beat it. Sal's

also going to share some of his favorite mindfulness practices and more. Now, before we dive into this episode, I have to shill for something to pay the bills, right? No, I'm just kidding. I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and really believe in. So instead, I am going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my workout app, Stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple Store with a four-star average. And it helps you get more out of your training in several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation. It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts,

as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It's free to download too. So if you want to check it out, then head over to www.getstackedapp.com or just hit the iOS app store and search for stacked workout and you will find it. All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let's get to the show. Sal, thanks for coming on the show, man. I'm excited to have you. I can return the favor. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, brother. It's always a good time hanging out with you and talking with you. Yeah. I'm going to be there in January, by the way. I'm going to be

setting that up. I'll get the dates to you probably later today, actually. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. We're all looking forward to it, man. We've met a lot of people in fitness, in the sphere of fitness and business. And you're definitely one of the people that stands out the most. Just your knowledge base on the business of fitness, obviously your fitness knowledge, your integrity was really what stood out and your openness to share how to succeed, how we could do better even on our side of the business.

We really appreciated it. So your listeners, your followers, they're on the right track by following you. Thank you, thank you. The check's in the mail. So that's a good start. No, no, I appreciate it. And likewise, I mean, I'm not nearly as well networked as you guys are. And I've met some cool people, but I have had not just the most fun, but also I like what you guys are doing. And I like you guys. And I feel like I have a pretty good sense of people, which is also what has kind of kept me away from networking on the whole, because I have not really liked a lot of what I've seen. And I wouldn't say it's disliking

people per se, but I would say I've met quite a few people that I just don't really resonate with. I would say they're just not my type of people. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. And it's unfortunate though. I mean, I'm going to be a little bit more blunt. It's unfortunate that the fitness industry has so many influencers that are terrible. And what I mean by terrible is literally, there's a lot of people that have lack integrity, complete lack of integrity. They lie, they cheat, they steal, and they spread a lot of horrible, just bullshit information just to sell their products or because they're insecure and they want people to look at them and attention.

And it sucks because I was a young kid when I got into fitness. I was 14, maybe 13, 14 years old when I really dived into fitness and immediately fell in love with it. And I'm the kind of person that if I like something, I dive deep and I get fanatical about it. And I did that with fitness and I consumed as much information as I possibly could. And over the years, I started realizing that a lot of the information that I thought was true and accurate and the common knowledge, the stuff that we thought was common knowledge in fitness wasn't true at all. One of the first big purchases I made in fitness, I was, I think I was 15 or 16. So at the time in the summers,

I would go to work with my dad. My dad's a blue collar worker, a immigrant, Sicilian immigrant, works very, very hard. And in the summers I'd go and I'd work with him and I'd save my money. So I'm 15 years old. This is like 1993 or something like that. I saved up like $500, something like that. And I bought this very expensive supplement stack called Cybergenics. I don't know if you remember Cybergenics. I think you're a little younger than I am, but Cybergenics would have these ads in the back of the muscle magazines. And there would be this before and after of some dude that looked fat. And then all of a sudden he's like jacked. You know what I mean?

He went from like a fat dude to like a ripped jack dude. And it was this like 15 bottles of different supplements. And it came with this whole like how you take them, the schedule, this whatever. And so I'm a kid. I'm 15 years old. I took my hard-earned money, convinced my mom to let me buy these supplements. And I ordered it. And I thought, for sure, of course, it's going to work, man. You got a picture of this dude that got super shredded. So there's my evidence. And then it's like 15 bottles of pills.

Like, of course, I'm going to get shredded because I'm taking all this stuff. And I got it in the mail, super excited. And I followed their program and everything they said and got nothing. I got zero out of it. I probably even maybe damaged my gut or something like that from it. And that was kind of the first clue that it's an industry that unfortunately is run by charlatans. Little by little, as I became a professional in fitness, I started training clients at the age of 18. Then I started managing and grand opening major health clubs at the age of 19 and 20. And by the time I was 21, I opened my own wellness facility. Because I love working with people so much, I was able to be much more objective

with my clients than I was with myself because a lot of the motivation behind my working out was my own insecurities. I wanted to build muscle. I felt skinny. But when you train clients, there's no insecurities there. I just want to help them. And little by little, I started realizing like, oh, all this stuff that I thought was good information is terrible and it's not helping them. And so I started diving deeper and I was able to become a more effective trainer and help clients. And through that process, I was able to discover some truth in fitness and that kind of paved the way to, you know, what I do now, which is, you know, I get to be a big mouth on a podcast and talk about all this awesome stuff. And, you know, like I'm blessed to meet people like you who kind of share that, you know, when I had first heard

about you years ago through, I think I, uh, it was a blog that he would have written. I remember reading your stuff and being like, Oh, this dude, he gets it. Like he's actually talking about good stuff. He's not spewing a lot of bullshit. I don't really think too much else after that. And then years later, I have a podcast and I find you on Instagram and contact you and was able to make that connection. And what's kind of exciting about today's market in fitness is because we have social media, because we have podcasts, which anybody with inexpensive equipment can make a podcast and put out information, you get a lot more stuff out there, but you also get a lot more

good information as well. If you look right, you look the right places. And I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful for the future of health and wellness because of that. So I just want to share that because sometimes there's a doom and gloom message. And I want to make sure people understand that there's a good side to what's going on as well. And I'm starting to see the good information come out and the bad stuff. It's starting to get weeded out a little bit. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, you have... So I got into weightlifting a little bit later.

So I was... I'm 33 now. So I was like 17, 18 when I got into it. I didn't really pay attention much to supplementation in the beginning. And eventually I found my way there and wasted a bunch of money on the same types of nonsense. But on the whole, I think that there are some very positive and encouraging trends. I mean, just the fact that, for example, that barbell training is getting more and more popular, thanks in a large part to CrossFit, to the rise of CrossFit. A lot of people I know, just because I've now been in touch with so many people over the years, a lot of people have found

their way into my orbit through CrossFit. Like that was their first introduction to at least somewhat sensible training, somewhat sensible exercise choices because they started squatting and overhead pressing and deadlifting, even if the programming was a bit wonky. So I think that's hugely popular. And I think also just in general, health and wellness is just gaining more and more general mindshare. It's on more and more people's minds. And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. I think for as long as we are in this line of work, we're probably going to see just the year over year increase in if you however you want to look at it, you could look at it just in just look on Google Trends, for example, and put in anything

related to physical fitness, even though I think you can actually select that as like a top level category or topic. And you'll see that going back to 2004, there's obviously a seasonable pattern. But year over year, you have more and more people that are searching for things related to getting fit. And that alone is is positive. positive. And then yeah, in terms of providing information, I think that the evidence-based movement is just growing larger and larger. You have at the core of it, good people that are, I mean, I'd say really at the core, you have the actual scientists doing the research. Around them, you have people that are doing a good job understanding, interpreting, and then spreading that research. And then yeah, sure. You have bad apples in there,

people that misuse it or, or just don't even take the time to understand anything. They just want people to think that they know what they're talking about. But you know, that's the case with anything though. There's always good and bad. And you have to see if you're going to assess the situation, does the good outweigh the bad? And I would say it's hard to, I guess maybe it's hard to make a snap judgment on the whole right now, but I think we are moving, like you said, in the right direction where over, we have more and more good gaining sway and more and more bad kind of slipping away. Well, I'll tell you what's exciting is because you have ease of accessibility to information and people can connect so easily now, you get these pools of information where... So anecdote is not evidence. However, anecdote can drive science to find the evidence. And in the past, it was hard to accumulate large amounts of the same kind of

anecdote to drive scientific research until it got so big and overwhelming that then scientists would look. And so the process was a lot slower. Well, today, if you have issues with certain types of foods, a particular type of dye or preservative, or you have an autoimmune disorder and you're finding that avoiding categories of foods help you, you can go online, you can join these groups, and then you can find tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. And then you can start to see these trends and it's driving research much faster than it did before. I'll give you a great example.

I have a family member who has Crohn's disease. And for people who aren't familiar, this is an inflammatory disease of the bowel, of the gut. And it's terrible. It's a terrible disease. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It can get very, very bad where people have to get portions of their intestines and colon resected. And the treatments that Western medicine at the moment offers are terrible themselves. Sometimes they have to go through low doses of drugs that are classified as chemotherapy, even to suppress the immune system. And it's just horrible. And in the past, that was your, that was it. That was your option. Like, okay, I got Crohn's disease. What do I do? And the doctor would just say, well, here's your drugs, go on these steroids.

And there's pretty much nothing else. And, you know, maybe avoid foods you think are bothering you. But there's really no evidence that we have, no scientific evidence that tells us what those might be and that's it. And it wasn't that long ago, Mike. I'm talking like five years ago, 10 years ago, that was your answer. Well, today, my family member, his mom is just super vigilant. She's a great mother, smart, very intelligent woman. She's a registered diitian. So she's got a background in nutritional education and it didn't help her at all with his condition. The current Western medicine kind of approach to nutrition is quite flawed in many different ways. And when it comes to autoimmune diseases at the moment, it's very flawed. So she went online

and started doing her own research and became a member of some of these forums and met with these groups. And she heard a lot of anecdote that referred to certain types of diets. One in particular is called the carbohydrate specific diet. And this is where you avoid, for the most part, all grains. And I don't know all the other specifics, but there were some specifics that all these people were talking about. So she took that information. She's seeing that there's thousands of people that are saying, again, if you get enough anecdote, that should drive some interest. And she said, well, I got nothing to lose. Let's give this a shot.

She applied it to her son, and he went into full remission. And today, as of right now, the carbohydrate specific diet now is undergoing legit research as a potential treatment for autoimmune diseases. The same is true for gut health, the microbiome, leaky gut syndrome. Mike, I tell you what, five years ago, if I said the words leaky gut syndrome in a medical conference or amongst a bunch of doctors or researchers, they would have laughed me out of the room. Today, you can find research on what is known as intestinal hyperpermeability, which is just the technical term for exactly what people have been observing, which is leaky gut syndrome. The same is true for what people used to call adrenal fatigue, which is now being more accurately coined HPAT axis dysfunction, hypothalamus,

pituitary, adrenals, and thyroid axis dysfunction. So it's really an exciting time when it comes to wellness and health. I'm very, very happy to be a part of this movement. and health. I'm very, very happy to be a part of this movement. And I really enjoy having my paradigm shattered. And it's happened several times over the last couple years. Just my views have changed because the information is changing so quickly. And then again, I get to meet really, really smart people who are talking about some of the cutting edge research. I just did an interview with Dr. Zach Bush and he was talking about gut hyperpermeability and the role that glyphosates may play in that. And he's a triple board certified physician, a legit scientific researcher. And some of the stuff he was sharing with me was just blowing my mind. And this is stuff that

Western medicine would have laughed at a few years ago. So it's pretty exciting stuff. What's really getting me excited right now is some of the stuff that's coming out on mindfulness and its effect on health and fitness and how it affects our eating decisions and all that kind of stuff. Intuitive eating kind of falls in that category. I know you and I have talked about it a little bit. If you want, we can kind of get in on that subject. I think it's a fascinating one. I think it's a trend that is growing and we're going to hear a lot more about it. So I don't know if you mind if we can talk about that a little bit. Yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about each of these things. Let's talk about the HBAT axis dysfunction. Let's talk about the leaky gut and let's talk about mindfulness because I mean, I'll say specifically leaky gut.

I've been emailed about that semi-frequently for years now. Unfortunately, especially a couple years ago, I couldn't really find even in terms of literature to read or in terms of reputable researchers that could help interpret the research. So, you know, I'd have to tell people, honestly, it's something I don't feel I know enough about to be very helpful, especially not to help solve a problem that may actually exist. So I think each of these things are interesting topics that, again, like you've said, right now, they're, let's say they're emerging, they're nascent, whereas a few years ago, they were considered just kind of fringe quackery that immediately disqualified you from having an opinion on anything.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy to me, Mike. I swear to God, this is stuff that I've been really into for a long time. And I remember I would bring this up. When I used to have my wellness facility, my wellness facility was maybe a quarter mile away from a hospital up in Los Gatos here in the Silicon Valley. And a lot of my clients were doctors and surgeons. And we would have these discussions on some of these topics and they would debate and argue with me on some of these things. And rightly so. I mean, there was no hard science supporting what I was talking about.

It was all theory. But now, when we have these same conversations, I've actually had one of them message me the other day. I still stay in contact with some of these people. And he's like, Sal, it's crazy that you were talking about this stuff. And I was kind of scoffing at it because I'm reading some research now that's pointing to what you were talking about. And that might actually be the case. So it's pretty exciting stuff. So leaky gut, it was an observed phenomena that kind of encompassed all of these symptoms that we didn't have an explanation for. So it was a theory that wellness professionals came up with. And really what leaky gut is, is when you put food in your mouth, you put anything in your mouth or even in your sinuses, you want to think of your mouth connecting to your anus and it's this through

this hollow tube. And when you put something in that hollow tube, it does not, it's not inside your body. A lot of us think when we put something in our mouth, now it's in my body. It's actually not in your body until it gets absorbed and assimilated through your intestines, through your stomach, through your gut, through that entire process. Until it's absorbed, it's going through this hollow tube. It's no different than having a donut and placing your hand through the middle of the donut. Your hand really isn't inside the donut. It's still on the outside of the donut, if that makes sense.

Now, your gut lining determines what enters your body and what doesn't enter your body, and it determines when things enter your body and what doesn't enter your body. And it determines when things enter your body. There are different points at which your body will absorb different things. And that whole system is very intricate and it needs to be very, very precise. If you can imagine, that is literally a barrier between you and potential toxins, potential bacteria that may be bad, potential allergens. It's a very, very important barrier, no different than your skin to the outside world. Now, when that lining becomes damaged, weakened, or inflamed, in particular inflamed, because when the cells of this gut lining become inflamed, they actually become more permeable. That's why it's called gut hyperpermeability or intestinal hyperpermeability.

Meaning that more things can get through. More things can get through and they get through at the wrong time. So you may have large protein molecules that are passing through into your bloodstream that shouldn't. Now, when this happens in your body, your body reacts to these things or particles or molecules that aren't supposed to be there as if they were foreign invaders. And what your body does when it thinks there's a foreign invader is it develops antibodies and you develop an autoimmune reaction. And this can cause a whole host of symptoms, everything from food sensitivities. So like, here's a common one, like somebody will say, oh man, you know, I used to be able to eat bread all the time. Now, all of a sudden,

when I eat bread, it destroys my stomach or I get bloating, or I just can't seem to digest it anymore. That's a common one. I get that all the time where I'll tell people, you know, maybe we should remove some of these foods. Maybe that's what's causing some of your problems. And then they'll tell me, but I've always eaten those foods. So that's a common one. Or autoimmune issues, which can range from pretty much any autoimmune issue from like rheumatoid arthritis to psoriasis to the more common ones like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease. You can get skin issues. Many, ones like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease. You can get skin issues. Many times, the skin will show problems. Acne is one of them. And mood issues, anxiety, depression,

I mean, just a whole host of issues. Anything that you can imagine that would happen because your body is attacking food that you would normally eat or your body starts attacking itself because of its heightened or inaccurate immune response. So that's kind of what happens from that. And our gut really today, what we're learning is it's under constant assault from some of the stuff that we're putting in our mouth. Things that we didn't realize could cause problems because we didn't know to test for some of these things. So a good example would be glyphosates. Glyphosates are a class of chemicals. Roundup is an example of a glyphosate.

Herbicides. These are classes of chemicals that interrupt a pathway called the shikimate pathway. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. In plants that kills plants. So when you spray herbicides on plants, this glyphosate interrupts this pathway, and this pathway is essential to producing certain amino acids, which are necessary for the plant to live and thrive. So you spray it with a glyphosate, interrupts this pathway, plant dies, you've got an effective herbicide.

So what chemical companies did, because the first glyphosates I think were invented in the early 1970s. Much later on, they invented genetically modified plants that could withstand these glyphosates. So now you can plant... Because the point agriculturally, right, is to kill weeds. That's it. That's why you would want these, right? So now you develop these plants that can withstand these glyphosates like corn and now you can blast them with glyphosates and it kills all the surrounding you know weeds or whatever and

your corn stays okay and boom it's a miracle of a you know agricultural engineering now the reason why it was considered safe is because we humans don't possess a shikamate pathway. So we know it interacts with this pathway. We don't have this pathway. Not going to bother us whatsoever, except we did not know to even consider to test our bacteria. And our bacteria does utilize something similar to a shikamate pathway. And we now know that glyphosates interact with our microbiome, which we're only really learning now to be extremely important to our health. This is why we now know

interrupting your microbiome or damaging your microbiome in fundamental ways can affect your mood even. We're finding that your microbiome is important for all of your health. I mean, if you were to count all of the bacteria cells that you have in and on your body, they would outnumber your human cells. That's literally how many there are. So we're like, you can safely say you're more bacteria than human just from a cell number basis. So it affects that. We also know now that glyphosates affect the cell wall of your intestines as well, your gut. So that's just one thing. And there's other things that we're now finding that can affect your gut. So we're creating all these problems with our gut. This is causing these

autoimmune reactions. It's no wonder. And here's an obvious one. Food allergies, very obvious one. That's not one that people like to debate. Oh, you have psoriasis. Is that really because your gut is off or you have acne or your anxiety is a result of that? Although there's a lot of evidence now that's showing that that's the case, but people still debate it. But nobody's going to debate like food allergies are on the rise. Food allergies exploding. I know you have kids, Mike. I have kids in school. When I was in school, I don't remember any kids with food allergies. I mean, if you had a peanut allergy in my school, it was like you stood out. It was that one kid with a food allergy. And I swear to God, I didn't know any of them. I don't think I knew anyone growing up that had a food

allergy. At least if they had, if any of my friends or I mean, I played sports growing up that had a food allergy, at least if they had, if any of my friends, or I mean, I played sports growing up. So if any, if they did, if any, if anyone that I knew growing up had a food allergy, I wasn't aware of it. Yeah. It's, it was rare today. There's entire classrooms, there's entire schools that are allergen free, peanut free. I mean, it's hard to go to a school that doesn't have at least a couple tables at lunch dedicated to kids with food allergies. So it's not, we didn't evolve to do this. This is, this happened relatively recently. We're talking about over the last, you know, 20 or 30 years, we've seen this huge spike in a lot of these changes and it's all due to issues with our gut and our microbiome. And now we're, we have some science talking about

what they're calling intestinal hyperpermeability and its effects on our health. And it's definitely stuff we're doing to ourselves that we didn't know to test before. Of course, now we have huge powers that be that control some of these things that are controlling our food supply and all this other stuff.

So it's very difficult to kind of turn this massive ship, but it's starting to happen. So I'm happy with that. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's an interesting line of research. Again, something I haven't studied all that much about, but recently I did write an article on gut health and just touching on a lot of the stuff that you were just mentioning in terms of it's not just about like, oh, you know, if I have a healthy gut, I guess I don't get stomach aches. And if I have an unhealthy gut, I do. Like, no, it impacts pretty much every aspect of your mental and physical health that you care about. Oh, and you know, some of the people who are afflicted with gut health the worst, believe it or not, are hard training individuals and athletes.

Believe it or not, if you look at some of the research on people who compete at high levels or train at high levels, they tend to suffer from gut issues at higher rates than the average population, which at first sounds crazy. It sounds like this strange conundrum, like, well, these are athletes. They should be eating healthy. Like, why are they having issues? Well, at the moment, people believe, or the prevailing theory is twofold. One is hard training, especially if you're bordering on overtraining can cause systemic inflammation, which can affect the gut. And the second may be the consumption of calorie-free foods that are sweetened with artificial sweeteners in particular, and supplements may wreak havoc on the gut, which, you know, and I tell you what, you want to talk about predictions. I predict we're going to see more and more products and supplements that are going to

look like yours that are, you know, sweetened, not artificially that are sweetened with naturally that pay attention to these types of types of things. As we learn more and more about some of the potential negative effects of these synthetic products that we're putting into our bodies. Yeah. And do you want to talk a little bit about that specifically? Because I know that that's also something that, again, I'm hearing a bit more about from just readers and listeners where they're asking. At first, it was a little bit ago, it was artificial sweeteners and weight loss. And that's pretty clear now. From that perspective, they're good. If you need sweet things and you don't want to work in the calories, sure. But what about general health? And that's been kind of vague because, you know, well, how could these

chemicals affect general health and gut health could be the answer. Yeah. And also you want to look at long-term because there is some conflicting information showing that artificial sweeteners may contribute to weight gain issues with insulin sensitivity. And there's some research right now that's showing that artificial sweeteners affect the microbiome's reaction to insulin and glucose. And of course, your microbiome plays a very important role in digestion and assimilation of food. It just may take a little longer. So if you take someone and you put them on artificial sweeteners and compare them to people who just have sugar over 12 weeks or six months, you're going to see weight loss. But if you do it over the course of years or maybe decades,

you start to see some troubling trends. And it likely has to do with the effect on the microbiome. I know there's some studies done on sucralose is a good example, where they showed that sucralose actually destroyed something like 50% of what we've already deemed to be beneficial bacteria that we have that's commonly found in the human microbiota. So, you know, there's that. And so going natural is probably your best bet. And I think you're seeing a much larger market for supplements that are all natural because it wasn't a lot. Five years ago, it was very hard for me to find protein powder that wasn't sweetened with sucralose or aspartame. It was almost impossible.

Today, you're starting to see more and more products that are devoid of those artificial sweeteners. Yeah, and it costs quite a bit of money to do it too. Speaking from experience here, it can cost upward of $3, $4, $5 to naturally sweeten and naturally flavor a product versus like maybe $0.50 if you go the artificial route? With HPA axis or HPAT axis dysfunction, that was called for a long time by wellness and health professionals, adrenal fatigue. I'm sure you've heard that term before. And it was laughed at for a long time by people in the science world, the medical world, Western medicine, because the explanation. So adrenal fatigue refers to, again, a group of symptoms that were kind of unexplained. Excess fatigue, trouble sleeping, inability to lose weight, strange cravings, mood fluctuations, cold, clammy hands, low libido, just kind of overall feeling like shit, but not having anything that the doctor can identify. And what wellness experts said was, well, what's happening is your

high stress life or your nutrition or your lack of sleep or whatever is causing your adrenal glands to become fatigued and to reduce their output of their hormones as you're getting adrenal fatigue. And the reason why Western medicine professionals laughed at that was because then these people would go to the doctor and they'd get tested and they'd have normal levels of adrenal hormones. They said, okay, your adrenals aren't getting tired. Your body's not reducing its output of these hormones. It's bullshit.

Therefore, it's all bullshit. Well, now we know that although it was misnamed, what's happening is kind of accurate. And it's now being called HPA or HPAT axis dysfunction. And this basically is, so you have your hypothalamus, your pituitary, your adrenals, and your thyroid that all produce their own hormones and chemicals that interact with them. And how they interact with each other is very important because if one is off or if one is producing more of something than the other, then the others tend to adapt to make up for it. So an easy example of this would be if you have an athlete that takes anabolic steroids, what's called a negative feedback loop. So I take anabolic steroids, my hypothalamus and my testes may sense that there's all this excess testosterone.

And what they'll do is they'll stop producing or reduce their production of testosterone to try to adapt and balance out the body. And this is why you get the side effects of, you know, testicular shrinkage and why when athletes go off of steroids, they go through a long period of being low testosterone and why sometimes they damage this so badly that they have to go on testosterone for the rest of their lives. Well, this can happen or something similar can happen naturally just by exposing your body to high levels or disproportionate levels of certain hormones through your lifestyle. So a good example is cortisol. We all know cortisol to be

the stress hormone. It's also an essential hormone and you need it for health. Cortisol rises and spikes naturally in the morning because it wakes us up. We need that to happen. At night, it naturally will drop because cortisol produces this hyper energetic feeling. And if we had high cortisol at night, then we'll have trouble sleeping. If my lifestyle, if my sleeping patterns, if my diet, my exercise is producing too much cortisol all the time, my body will aim to adapt to that by doing a few different things. It will reduce its receptor density that cortisol attaches to. So it'll downregulate cortisol receptors.

Now, my body then may respond, or I may respond to that by noticing, well, shit, now I feel more tired. I feel even more fatigued. And so what we tend to do is we tend to try and get more cortisol to come out. So we take stimulants like coffee or fat burners, or we up the intensity of our workouts because it temporarily makes us feel

better. We start to kick the can down the road, so to speak. And over time, you actually start to develop this low level of cortisol resistance, no different than you would get with insulin resistance before you develop diabetes. And so this turns into a problem with the body. And over time, it can get worse and worse and worse to where I get these athletes that will hire me because I do some online coaching. And I'll get these athletes and people that will hire me, like these ex-bikini competitors or these ex-physique competitors who, you know, they're doing an hour cardio a day. They're consuming very minimal calories.

And if they consume anything over their minimal calories, or if they reduce their cardio from an hour a day to 30 minutes a day, boom, body fat comes up on their body all of a sudden or they just don't respond to the gym or they need five cups of coffee a day just to function or it's a 25-year-old kid who just can't seem to get a good night's sleep or they'll start to suffer from symptoms of anxiety. And what I do at that point is I take them through a protocol to try to balance out that HPA axis or HPAT axis so that things start to balance out so their body becomes more optimized and they're not experiencing

some of these negative symptoms. And it can take a little while. I've actually worked with people, sometimes it takes as long as six months to get their bodies balanced back out. But then when we finally do get there, it's an amazing thing. Now their body responds again. They're not getting fat if they stop cardio for a couple days. Their strength is going up like it used to. They're not getting crazy cravings. They can sleep again. And it's a beautiful thing, but it's tough because we're taught to ignore these signals for a long time until our body released. You know, it's not just speaking to us.

It's yelling at us. And it's at that point, people tend to seek someone out like myself or functional medicine practitioners. And then it's a little bit of a long road. Yeah. And how does that recovery protocol look usually? Like for anybody out there that can relate to some of the symptoms that you're talking about, what types of things do you generally do to reverse the condition?

So it depends on the individual, but typically what I'll do first, we'll focus on gut health. I have yet to see anybody with HPA axis or HPA T axis dysfunction who doesn't also have some gut health issues. And they tend to go hand in hand. One causes the other and vice versa. And it's the circular kind of feeding effect where they both start to get worse. So I'll focus on gut health. And so what I'll have them do is become more aware of foods that potentially will affect them negatively.

And so right off the bat, we'll start off with an elimination diet and I'll have them eliminate foods that are common intolerances in people. So gluten, milk proteins, so dairy, I'll have them eliminate. Egg whites and nuts are the top ones I'll have eliminate. Sometimes I'll have them eliminate all processed foods as well. Processed foods can have a detrimental effect on the gut. Once it's already inflamed, we'll start with a sleep routine because what I'm trying to do, typically these people have issues with sleep.

And so what we're trying to do is to get their cortisol levels to drop before they go to bed, to get their bodies to produce natural levels of melatonin. And a sleep routine typically, and this is a general one, will be like an hour before bed, turn off all electronics. Electronic light has a similar effect on the body to like the sun would have. And our bodies do run off of this kind of circadian rhythm where if you're exposed to sunlight or light, it doesn't get into its parasympathetic or sleep stage until you're in the dark for something like

an hour or two. So I'll tell them, okay, eliminate all electronics an hour before bed, turn off all the lights in your house or dim them if you can. Ideally go by candlelight. Candlelight or fire doesn't have the same negative effects on the body. I'll have them drink chamomile tea before bed. Chamomile is a very, very mild central nervous system depressant. It's very safe. You can give it to children. It doesn't seem to have any habit forming effects. I'll say, drink some chamomile before bed, do some belly breathing, maybe a minute worth, and that should improve their sleep. When it comes to exercise, I'll gradually reduce and then eliminate all forms of cardiovascular

or structured cardiovascular training. I know that sounds crazy, and the reason why I don't cut it off completely right off the bat is their body will rebound very quickly if I do that. So if I say, okay, I know you're doing an hour cardio day, cut it all out, they'll gain 10 pounds of body fat real quick and then they won't want to work with me anymore. And so I need them to also kind of stay with me and not lose their motivation or hope and not freak out. So I'll slowly, gradually reduce and eliminate their cardio because cardiovascular activity sends a signal to the body to become more efficient with calories. So in other words, when you do an hour of cardio, although you are burning lots of calories at that

time, the adaptation that you're asking of your body is to adapt in a way that makes it more efficient with its calorie burning, aka slow down. And since this individual is probably already burning very little calories or less than they could, I want to start to remove that signal or eliminate that signal so that the body isn't fighting to try and be more efficient with calories while we're trying to boost its calorie burn at the same time. them focus on traditional straight set resistance training, two or three days a week, full body routines, focusing on the compound movements. I won't have them trained to failure because at that moment, intensity is their body's going to be sensitive to it. I'm going to have them focus on the skill of exercise, focus on getting stronger, but also becoming more mobile. And that's kind of the beginning of where I'll start someone off. And then as we continue to work together, we will become more specific. And really, it's levels of awareness that I'm trying to bring them through to get them to an eventual point

where they can eat and train on a more intuitive level. And I know that's kind of a buzz term today. It's misused quite a bit. It's misunderstood a lot. Most people have no idea what real intuitive eating means. And I can go into kind of explaining what that means. But my goal is to move them to a point where they really first understand how to listen to their body. then they understand what those signals mean. They understand how to respond to those signals and then to move them to a point where they've conditioned themselves to a point where it's unconscious or it's more unconscious to where they make food decisions and exercise decisions based on how they feel. And it's always the right decision or at least it's better decisions as a result of that.

Yeah, I think we should do a separate episode on intuitive eating because I think there's probably a 45 minute discussion to be had just with that alone. I mean, I could go for hours on that subject. Like I said, it's super misunderstood. A lot of people don't really understand how to deliver it. I think a lot of people mean intuitive eating is eating whatever you want, which it's not

really that way. We're specifically eating whatever makes you feel good in a given moment. It's that. And I'll tell you what, the food industry understands intuitive eating very, very well. They've understood it for a long time and they've marketed to it and they've maximized this natural way we make connections with food to their benefit and to our detriment. Yeah, that's actually an episode that I want to record. I want to find someone. I was thinking maybe Brian, he wrote Mindless Eating, he might be good. Or maybe Denise Minger who wrote

Death by Food Pyramid to talk specifically about the science of food and how big food companies for decades now have spent a lot of money and put a lot of brainpower into figuring out how to create foods that are chemically addictive and then also how to market them in a way that makes them more appealing and ultimately addictive. Because that's the game they're in. Just like how people that make apps or let's say casual games especially, their entire focus is how do I get people more addicted to my game? How do I get people to, you know, more addicted to my app, to my website or whatever? Similarly, unfortunately, I mean, it's unethical, but I guess it's

understandable if you just look at it from a financial perspective, I guess. And, you know, when your livelihood depends on something, it's easy to find ways I guess. And, you know, when, when your livelihood depends on something, it's, it's easy to find ways to justify, especially if you just apply a little ends justifies the means thinking. But anyways, I, that's, that's an episode I'd like to record because I've read a bit about it here and there, but I would, I would really love to get someone that has inside knowledge and give some interesting stories. Like, I mean, in one book, I don't remember which it was, but I read about the guy that invented the Cheeto and how he's, you know, a food scientist, I guess, maybe it'd be, maybe that's not the technical term. That's essentially

what he, what he was or is, I think he's still alive. And he was super excited about the Cheeto because he was saying, basically, this is the perfect addictive food, chemically speaking. And then also the fact that it melted in your mouth and had no volume, you know, you could just eat an entire bag and not even realize it. So there was the flavor and how your body reacted to that, other chemicals in it, how your body reacted to those and how your body reacted to the, to the melt in your mouth kind of experience and then no volume. And he was so proud of himself. It's most of the money that goes into creating food or producing food goes into the research

behind how to make it hyper palatable and how to create positive associations with their foods so that you end up wanting to eat more of them. But knowing this, when you educate yourself on this, you can use these hacks, if you will, to create associations with foods based on your body's natural signals. And you can start to find that you can train yourself, if you will, to make better decisions with some of these same techniques. It really is fascinating. If you talk to anybody about alcohol is a great example. And you'll say to someone, I'm sure we've all heard this where I'll be like, hey, you want some tequila? And they'll be like, no, I can't have tequila. I got really sick on it one time and now I just can't even smell it. That is a clear association that your brain has created with tequila to make you repulsed by that

tequila. Well, you can switch that and reverse it and create positive associations with food. And there's things in the middle that you can do with food. And it really has to do with really starting to become aware of some of the signals that your body sends you with foods. I have a client just recently who hated vegetables, couldn't stand the taste of vegetables, never liked vegetables. And through coaching her, bringing her to more awareness with the food around her and how her body felt around it, she started noticing that when she did eat vegetables, she started feeling

better. Her skin was better. She had more energy. Digestion was good. Mood was better. And over the course of a few months, she started finding that she craved vegetables. And really, it's because she started creating this positive association with these foods. Food manufacturers had known this for a long time. It's the reason why you will never see an advertisement for food where somebody eats something and then has diarrhea or something horrible afterwards. They would never do that because they would lose millions of dollars worth of sales. So instead, they create positive associations like, drink our beer, get all these hot chicks and have a great party and be cool. Or, you know, you're at the movies and popcorn goes great with movies.

And all of a sudden I'm at the movies and what do I crave? Popcorn. I never crave popcorn ever, except for when I'm at the movies. You know, when you eat a pizza, you know, you want to cook. Why is that? It's the same thing. same thing. So that's just one of the pieces of the process behind learning how to listen to your body signals so that moving ahead in the future, you start to crave foods that are better for you, that are healthier for you. You don't judge yourself when you eat things that are quote unquote bad for you because maybe at that moment, eating a cupcake was about you bonding with your kid at their birthday or having a glass of wine. You're not judging the fact that you had alcohol because at that moment, you were reading the

signal that your body was telling you, which was, I'm here with my wife right now. We're enjoying our evening. We're loosening up and this glass of wine is doing me well. Because it's also important to note that you can go so extreme on the health food side where you can become orthorexic or where you track your food so religiously that anytime you go off that, it causes you tremendous amounts of stress and anxiety. Absolutely. I mean, there's something to be said for just the repeated exposure effect too when we're talking about food. The more often you eat something, the more you're

going to come to like it, period. And we've all experienced that with one food or another. So, take the vegetables, perfect example, not only were there actually noticeable benefits that she could associate the vegetable eating with, but just the mere fact of eating vegetables frequently is going to increase the likelihood that she's going to eventually find them positive and you're going to want to keep eating them. It's just the simple psychological elements of related to consistency and also the things that we do, we want to do more of. Yeah, it's fascinating. These are the things I like to talk about with clients and on the podcast, things that I think have real long lasting impacts on people's fitness, health and longevity. I mean,

there are lots of things you can do to get short-term results or to feel good in the short term, but I've been in fitness for 20 years, Mike, and I have seen so many people enter into fitness and leave. I have seen fitness not be the answer to health problems. I've seen it not be the answer to the obesity epidemic. I've seen it become the answer, but through some of the stuff that we're talking about, understanding real behavioral changes and real applicable tips and information. Exercise is a fantastic example. And I know you went through a similar thing when it came to training, Mike. When you first started working out, I'm sure no doubt what you read,

the best way to work out if you wanted to build muscles to do a body part split, that was the way you train. Pretty sure that's how you started training if I'm wrong, right? If I'm correct. Yep. Yep. Just bodybuilding magazine workouts. And that meant two-hour chest days and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. And something like that is a great one. If you look back at some of the information that the old time strong men and bodybuilders were presenting before anabolic steroids, you find that what they recommended always was kind of this full body type routine, these big movements, and more frequency of training. And they used to tell people to not train to fatigue or to failure too often. Steve Reeves and John Grimmick and Eugene Sandow, and you can go back even further. These guys would say things like, practice the movements, practice the exercises, do them

frequently, don't train to failure. And that's the best, most effective way to building muscle and building strength. And I learned that about 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I started to train my muscle groups more frequently and I maintained the same level of volume. So in other words, instead of doing 15 sets for chest on Monday, I would do five sets on Monday, five sets on Wednesday, five sets on Friday. And my body just responded like crazy. And this is after I'd been working out for a year. So I wasn't a beginner. And I started applying

some of these concepts and principles to training my clients. And a lot of them are the foundations of the programs that we on our podcast, Mind Pump. And people are just getting phenomenal results. And they're going off of these, you know, what we considered common knowledge, which was, you know, hit your body part really hard on, you know, Monday and then don't hit it until the next Monday because you got to let it rest and recover. There's some truth in that, but there's a lot of myth in that as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think when you get into programming, you have to take, obviously there are multiple factors to take into account. Like, for example, my Bigger leaner, stronger program is

it's meant mainly for people that are new to weightlifting, at least new to proper weightlifting. And really what it is, is it's a basic strength routine. It's a basic push, pull legs routine with some additional upper body volume, because quite frankly, you know, that's what guys care more about. And in, I don't know if your experience is in line with mine, but you've been in the game a lot longer than I have, but I've worked now with, and I've been in touch now with, I probably have 40,000 plus emails, not unread, but like, if I go to a total email conversation, you know what I mean? And most guys are going to find that they're going to be happy with their lower body a lot sooner than their upper body. And it takes a

lot more work to get, especially with certain muscles, like, you know, the pecs going to be happy with their lower body a lot sooner than their upper body. And it takes a lot more work to get, especially with certain muscles, like, you know, the pecs tend to be pretty stubborn because in our day-to-day lives, we don't really use them at all. Shoulders are pretty much always a problem if you're a natural weightlifter. Arms as well. Like you won't necessarily have the arms that you want without directly training your arms unless you just happen to be a very if your biceps or triceps are just if they respond incredibly well then yeah maybe you don't need to do any

curls or close grip bench press or stuff but so you know because people ask me like hey so bigger than you're stronger is kind of a body part split because you're not training everything multiple times a week and my response to that is well one if you want to really train everything multiple times a week you better have some fucking time on your hands. You better be able to be in there. You know what I mean? You better be able to be in the gym six days per week, probably like an hour and a half per session. So if you have that time and you are so inclined, yes, you can.

But I wouldn't just blindly do that. I would take a step back and go, well, so what do you want from your body? What do you want to do? Most guys, they want to gain what probably about 30 pounds of muscle, um, in the right, in the right places. And they want to be around 10% body fat. And that to them is like, that's the end game. If they could just get there and maintain that, um, that's, that's the big win. Okay. So that's where most guys want to be. And where do they want that muscle? Again, most guys, they don't want to neglect their lower's where most guys want to be. And where do they want that muscle? Again, most guys, they don't want to neglect their lower body. They want it to be proportionate, but that means

that, you know, if you want a proportionate upper body and lower body, you should not be squatting three times a week and deadlifting. A traditional strength training program is great, but look at the type of physique that builds. You're going to have big legs, a big ass, and you're going to have an underwhelming upper body almost always, unless drugs are involved or unless great genetics are involved. So, you know, I think it really kind of the programming really depends on what are you trying to do and also your training history. There's something to be said also for like body part or like hybrid type splits where you have some, you know, you have some body part specific stuff

mixed in with maybe some more upper and lower body stuff can also make sense in the case of intermediate or advanced weightlifters who have to really increase volume on, let's say shoulders or arms or individual muscle groups that they might need to dedicate 30, 45 minutes a week to just for that muscle group in addition to their more inclusive or compound training as well. Yeah, absolutely. What you want to do is when you look at, you know, when I refer to these

old time training programs, like what the strong men that used to do, and you want to look at what they're saying, you don't necessarily want to need to follow their exact workout, but you want to look at some of the truth behind how they trained and everybody does respond differently. Individual variances can be quite dramatic from person to person, but there are general truths. And frequency of training was one that was neglected very, very heavily for a long time in muscle building routines. It was all about beat the crap out of a muscle once a week. 10 years ago or so, I'm noticing that people that don't even lift weights that have this frequent stimulation of particular body parts also had those body parts be pretty developed. I mean, again, I had said earlier in the podcast that my dad was blue collar, but my whole family's blue collar. So I've got plumbers, I've got mechanics in my family,

My whole family's blue collar. So I've got plumbers, I've got mechanics in my family, stone workers and mail carriers. And if you look at them, like the mechanics, for example, you know, they've been doing, you know, working with wrenches and stuff for 30 years. year of their job, but that's not happening anymore. And yet these guys have forearms that would rival anybody who lifts weights for a living. I mean, ridiculous muscle development in some of these areas that are stimulated on a very frequent basis. You look at the calves of male carriers. Look at your common mailman that walks by your door who's been doing it for more than 10 years. They're not doing heavy calf raises. They're not getting lots of muscle damage, but they've usually got pretty well-developed muscular calves. And that's an area that's notoriously difficult to develop. And so I started recognizing this and saying, wow, frequency of stimulation makes a huge difference. And if I can take some elements of that and incorporate it into my training and manipulate the intensity so that I don't over train, I should come out with some pretty effective programming. That's indeed what

I did. So something you can even do if you're listening right now, you can do for yourself. You take your current programming, don't even change it. Just take a weak body part. You have your normal hard workouts that you do with it. But on the days that you don't train it, just do some light sets in the gym where you get a good pump, you get a good stretch, you're squeezing blood into it and watch what happens. Nothing intense. You don't want to create any damage, just enough to give yourself a little bit of a burn, a little bit of a pump in that muscle and you'll blow yourself away at the way the body will respond. And we also know now that active recovery is a real thing. So there's also the recovery facilitation that's happening from that movement.

But there is a very small muscle building signal that's being sent. And when you combine that with the larger, louder muscle building signals that you're sending through your heavier and hard workouts, you can perform magic. It'll really blow you away. Yeah. And something also that everybody should keep in mind is when you are performing a lot of compound exercises, there naturally is overlap, which benefits you as well. So if you are, let's say, doing some heavy deadlifting one day, you're training a lot of muscles in your body.

And then let's say you're doing some heavy squatting on another day. You are training your lower body twice per week. That's also kind of a misconception I know that's out there is that people are thinking that they have to now squat two, three, maybe even four times a week or have to deadlift several times. You're going to have to perform specific individual exercises as opposed to looking at, no, what muscles are you training and how often are you training them? Absolutely. You can train the body so many different ways and muscle groups are affected by lots of different exercises and movements. Squatting is great. It's a fundamental movement of the human body. Deadlifting is a fundamental, you know, hip hinge movement. So it's important, but there's lots of variations of those things.

You know, a lunge or a split stance squat is important to incorporate. What I find with people who do lots and lots of squatting, although they do tend to develop great lower bodies, is they also tend to develop recruitment patterns that can be deficient in other areas. For example, when I do a split stance squat or a lunge, although that front leg is mimicking very closely to what a squat is doing, that back leg is very different. And so I have this kind of torsion happening on my pelvis. And that's an important recruitment pattern for movement. Bulgarian split squat is another one. And what you an important recruitment pattern for movement. Bulgarian split squat is another one. And what you'll find when you incorporate some of these different movements

is they'll benefit those core movements as well. And lastly, I think what you also want to consider is the way the body adapts can be quite specific. So if I get really good at one movement, I'll get a little bit of carryover to other movements, but most of the adaptation is going to happen to that movement. So if I squat a lot, I'll get really good at squatting and I may get a little bit of carryover to other movements, but most of the adaptation is going to happen to that movement. So if I squat a lot, I'll get really good at squatting and I may get better at some other exercises. I'll have some carryover, but most of it's going to be to that squat. So it's important to train a variety of movements. But, you know, also that being said, it's a good idea to train a specific movement pattern for, you know,

and to focus on that movement pattern for a period of time so that you can get through the acclimation period. You can get your body to recruit muscles effectively. You can get the CNS to fire the way you want it. Then you can start to really yield the benefit from that exercise, but then make sure you back out of that cycle so that you don't develop some of these patterns. And I found in most people, that's between two to six weeks of a particular movement pattern or workout type routine. Yeah. Greg Knuckles has written about that. The skill component, it definitely is part of the bigger picture, but it doesn't play as big of a role as some people think. It doesn't take that long for your body to learn how to do what it is that you want it to do.

And from there, it's mainly just getting stronger. That's really, and essentially, especially when you're an intermediate and advanced weightlifter, that comes down to just building muscle. You know, in the beginning, yeah, you can build a fair amount of muscle without getting all that strong. But once your newbie gains are behind you, you really have to focus on getting stronger and you're not going to get there through like trying to improve your how well your nervous system is working or trying more or less as good as it's going to, as well as it can in that movement. And that now it just comes down to proper programming, proper nutrition, rest, all the things that make for the long-term progress. Yeah. After that point, you're looking at getting very specialized at your skill. So if you compete in a strength sport that requires you to perfect your skill, like you are an Olympic lifter,

you are a power lifter, then it kind of becomes more important. But for the average trainee, it's not as important to become a master of a particular movement per se. Although some exercises do require a longer adaptation period for skill and depends where you start, like a squat, a barbell squat requires you know more practice than a barbell curl well especially if you're a new client i mean i i would get clients sometimes off the streets who i would train them to get into a squat and it would take us months to get them to even perform a good squat because they were so deconditioned and then at that point their skills start to improve and then we were able to build muscle from you know that exercise

but uh it takes a while but the other thing you want to consider with the CNS is the central nervous system is not fixed. It's always responding. It's always adapting. The central nervous system adapts very quickly and is very responsive. So here's a good example. If you never balance on one foot, practice balancing on one foot. And within a minute, you'll find your

balance will improve a little bit. Or another example would be do some static stretching. Like if you have trouble touching your toes, so you're reaching down to touch your feet, you can't get to your feet, do some stretching for 30 minutes. Your central nervous system adapts within that 30 minutes, relaxes the muscle, and all of a sudden you've got another three or four inches range of motion. The muscle didn't actually lengthen. You didn't actually increase the, you know, the stretchiness of the muscle, which is what people think. You're actually getting what's called, you know, you're getting a central nervous system

adaptation. So the CNS does adapt pretty much all the time. Sometimes I go to the mall and I'd see these chiropractors or these people who are selling these like medallions or these bracelets that supposedly balance your body out. It's like total snake oil. And what they'll have you do is they'll have you balance on one foot and put an arm out and they'll push down on your hand and they'll be like, wow, look, you fell over. And then they'll put the bracelet on you and have you do the same thing. And all of a sudden your balance is better. And they'll be like, wow, look, the bracelet is so effective. What's really happening.

Your CNS adapted a little bit to that movement because you practiced it once or twice. It's a little snake oil sales trick that they're doing with you, but that's your CNS. And the CNS adapts and reacts a lot of things, not just movement. It adapts and reacts to your diet, your sleep, your mood, your thoughts. I could take an athlete who is in peak physical condition and ready to perform and they could get some terrible news like a loved one just passed away or something horrible just happened and they will see an immediate decline in physical performance even though their muscles are the same their nutrition was the same everything else is the same the cns adapts all the time so you want to think of it as

a psych flowing thing that's kind of reacting at all moments. And that's why it's important to understand because when I go into my training, I need to take that into account and prime properly, train properly, and read my workout as I'm going through the workout to adapt my training session based on how I feel I'm moving. Great points for sure. And it requires knowing what's going on with your body and understanding the underlying physiological mechanisms. So you've put in a lot of time and you know a lot. So you're able to do that. For sure. I love learning about this stuff. I think once you've been doing this for a long time, you just get deeper and weirder and weirder and deeper and deeper with the stuff that you start to learn and present. I know Ben Greenfield is a good friend of mine. And I asked him the other

day, I was like, dude, why are you always talking about like the weirdest stuff like these, you know, light probes you put up your nose and your ears and these red light therapy you're putting on your testicles, increased testosterone, all this weird stuff. And he's like, man, I've been in this for so long. He's like, I can't talk about macros and exercise anymore. I've basically touched on everything. And I just got to keep getting weirder and weirder with my information.

And it goes to aliens. That's the next. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. So let's quickly touch on mindfulness. Something else you mentioned that is coming more and more kind of, you know, into the general fitness consciousness. Absolutely. So it's a buzz term. It's going to be another facet of the fitness industry that's going to grow. You're going to see a lot more talk around mindfulness, primarily because there's two reasons, I think. One, we're so plugged in with our electronics now that people are starting to value quiet time or mindfulness or wanting to get away and meditate or go to a float tank or go hiking and get away from everything. Whereas before, if you're in your car and you're driving, when I was a kid, if you left the house, nobody could get ahold of you

until you got back home. So you were just on your own and you had a little bit of that quiet time. So that's one reason why I think it's more popular. The other reason why I think it's more popular is because like we talked about earlier in the podcast, there's a lot more information being presented and people are learning about that psychological side of fitness, health and wellness and how important it is. And mindfulness really encompasses that. Let's talk about in the context of exercise. A lot of people work out because they don't like something about their body. Okay, so I'm going to the gym because I think I'm fat, or because I don't like my belly or because I don't like something about their body. Okay, so I'm going to the gym because I think I'm fat or because I don't like my belly

or because I don't like my arms are too skinny. I want to build more muscle. And if that becomes my primary driving motivation, it will drive the decisions I make when I work out. And sometimes that's okay, but other times it's not okay. So if I really hate my fat body and I go to the gym to work out and I had a very stressful day and I didn't sleep very good the night before and I've got three kids and I'm

super fatigued and just feeling like crap and I drag myself to the gym and I'm hating my body and maybe yesterday I ate a burrito or something that wasn't good for me, I may treat that workout as a punishment. I may hammer my body really hard to try and make myself feel better temporarily, punishing myself for being fat, not liking the way I look and for eating that burrito. And that may be the wrong thing to do at that moment, because maybe I'm under a lot of stress. I didn't sleep. Like I said, my body's feeling fatigued. And the right prescription of exercise at that moment may be something more mild, may be something along the lines of yoga or slower forms of resistance training where I'm just

feeling the muscle and just moving the body. Maybe I'm going to focus on mobility. And so because I'm not mindful of what I should be doing for my body, what the proper thing I should do for my body is, I'm making decisions that aren't necessarily serving me best. So that's one example. It's a very basic example of being mindful. Another one would be around food. If I find that I eat comfort foods or more foods that aren't necessarily good for me because I'm anxious, then when I become more mindful of that and I slow the process down and I say to myself, okay, I'm going to eat this because I'm anxious. Let me think of all the other things I can do that deal with my anxiety that don't involve eating things that aren't good for me,

which will then just cause more anxiety down the road. That's another form of mindfulness, just stopping, slowing down, becoming more conscious of what's going on. After practicing that for a while, it becomes more automatic. The other thing is practices like meditation. Meditation really is just trying to be present. In other words, not thinking about the future, like what I need to do, not thinking about the past, what happened. It's just being here right now, feeling what's around me right now, being aware of my awareness, being aware that I am not my body, that I am not my thoughts, that I am the awareness that's observing all of these things. Those moments of awareness improve things like productivity at work. They improve your ability

to recall information. They are creativity boosting, performance enhancing. You're finding more and more professional athletes spend time on mindfulness. You'll find that if you're driven to eat things because of depression or anxiety or whatever, that those things become less of a problem. What we're finding is that spending some time on mindfulness gives you that time plus in terms of productivity. It's trading. It's like you're trading dimes for quarters. So I like to tell people sometimes if you go meditate and practice meditating, because it is a practice, it's not something you're good at right away. It sucks and it's difficult. And especially those of us who are type A can be

infuriating to take five minutes aside to do nothing because we always want to do something. But what you'll find is that five minutes will turn into 10 minutes of productivity. And then you'll start finding that you'll start seeking those things out more and more. So I think we're going to find more importance or more emphasis being placed on mindfulness. The only drawback I have, or I guess negative I have around that is the fitness industry tends to take good information and then tends to package it and sell it in a shitty way that kind of takes away from its effectiveness. It does this with everything from fasting to ketogenic diets to low carb diets to whatever. They'll take it and turn it into something that then turns it into crap. So that I'm waiting for that to happen. But I am happy that mindfulness

is becoming part of the lexicon of fitness. Yeah. And what are some of your personal mindfulness practices? Like what works for you? Like take, for example, when you're stressed, what do you do instead of eating? Because I know a lot of people listening turn to food when they're stressed. Breathing is one of my favorite things to do. Now, of course, you're always breathing. So I'm not saying that I don't breathe otherwise. But if I stop for a second and I take a deep breath and I focus on that deep breath coming in to my belly. And so I get a full diaphragmatic breath, have my belly expand out, then my chest expand out, hold that breath for three to five seconds, and then breathe out and be very like really focused on what's happening with my breath and breathing out. In that moment, I find that I can bring things down a level and become more centered and more just more calm in general. The autonomic response to that, your body does get a little more sympathetic when you do that. Excuse me, parasympathetic when you do that. There's the mental component to stopping and taking a break and not thinking about anything else. And it's also the fact that I have this tool that I know I can use.

And it takes a moment. I'll do it sometimes when I get in my car. I'll get in my car, put my seatbelt on, and I'll do it. And then I'll drive. And it kind of resets me. So that's my own personal one. It's really easy, really fast. There's another one that my girlfriend introduced me to a while ago which is she calls it slow walking so what I'll do is this one takes a little bit longer time need a little bit of space but I'll go in a quiet room and I'll stand in the corner of that room and I'll take all my shoes and my socks off so I'm barefoot and I'll walk as slow as I possibly can from one corner of the room to the other, focusing on every point of contact of my feet, focusing on moving extremely slow and making this process as drawn out as I possibly can.

Takes about five minutes because my mind is so focused on what I'm doing at that present moment. I find that it's a kind of a form of mindfulness or a form of making myself present. It's quite effective. It just takes a little bit more time and space to do. Sure. It sounds kind of a form of mindfulness or a form of making myself present. It's quite effective. It just takes a little bit more time and space to do. Sure. It sounds kind of like body scanning, you know, the sleep strategy. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I haven't even thought of that one. I haven't done that one in a while. Absolutely. And in the breathing, I actually like to do the same thing. Where did I hear about it? I think I heard it from like, oh, some Navy SEAL thing they call box breathing, where it's three to five seconds in, hold three to five seconds, three to five seconds out. Absolutely. It's such an effective technique that, like you said, the military has invested

quite a bit of money in researching the effects of these techniques on performance. And they're finding that, for example, you talk about the Navy SEALs, that they're able to enter into a state of group flow, otherwise known as the zone or whatever, uh, much quicker when they practice these types of things on a regular basis. All right. Well, I think we could go on forever if we didn't stop at some point. For sure, man. I always enjoy talking to you, brother. Really, uh, again, you're one of the good people in this industry. I'm glad we connect. Thank you. I feel the same way. And, uh, let's wrap up with telling everybody where they can find you and your work and the rest of your buddies over at Mind Pump.

And, you know, if there's anything in particular you want. And I know you just launched an e-book. Yeah, so we just launched an e-book. It's an intuitive eating guide. So it kind of goes in depth and gives people steps to follow so that they can go from not being aware to tracking to using all these different tools and techniques to get to a point where they can eat intuitively they don't necessarily need to track to feed their bodies and find themselves being lean strong and healthy naturally we also have a lot of programs that we we sell exercise programs and whatnot but you can find our podcast on pretty much any platform the podcast is mind pump our website is mindpumpmedia.com.

And then we have a YouTube channel. We post 365 fitness videos a year, ranging from exercise demonstrations, workouts, nutrition talks, Q&As, like you name it, we do it. Tons of information and content. That is Mind Pump TV on YouTube. I didn't know that.

You do one video a day. That's impressive. Every day, dude. We've committed to it and it's a pain in the ass, but we love it too. I understand. Okay. Well, as everybody that is listening can tell, Sal knows his shit and that's why I brought him on the show.

It's always fun to talk to him and just kind of give him the ball and let him run with it. So, yeah, I highly recommend that everyone listening go check out Mind Pump. Check out the podcast. Check out their new e-book. If you're interested at all getting away from having to weigh and measure and track everything, how to eat more according to your body's natural signals of hunger and satiety, then it's going to help you. Thanks, man. That was a lot of fun, man. I enjoyed talking to you. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

And if you did and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email

at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my workout app stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple store with a four star average. And it helps you get more out of your training in several

ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation. It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts, as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It's free to download too. So if you want to check it out, then head over to www.getstackedapp.com or just hit the iOS app store and search for stacked workout and you will find it.