On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Shawn Stevenson ON: How to Heal Your Gut & Eat Smarter to Improve Your Brain Health

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on CalmJay Shetty sits down with Shawn Stevenson to talk about the amount of control we have over our body. Studies have shown that our thoughts are powerful enough to motivate us to move, to thrive, and to succeed. The same goes for our determination to improve ourselves. If we use the strength of our mind to push ourselves and our body to exceed what society deems as our limits, we can achieve far greater things. Shawn Stevenson is the author of the USA Today National bestseller Eat Smarter and the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter. He’s also creator of The Model Health Show, featured as the number #1 health podcast in the U.S. with millions of listener downloads each year. A graduate of the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Shawn studied business, biology, and nutritional science and became the cofounder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance. Shawn has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Times, Muscle & Fitness, ABC News, ESPN, and many other major media outlets.Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/What We Discuss:00:00 Intro03:15 Diagnosed with a degenerative disease12:31 Body movement is the primary driver of healing21:36 The power of food to reboot our metabolism32:23 How brain inflammation affects our body41:13 The human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe47:36 Your overall stress load as a human being59:13 Placebo clinical trial on prison inmates01:06:20 Our mood improves when we’re healthier01:10:33 If you allow a person to speak01:16:59 We’re living in a sick society01:26:25 Abundance in people resources is a giftEpisode ResourcesShawn Stevenson | InstagramShawn Stevenson | TwitterShawn Stevenson | YouTubeShawn Stevenson | LinkedInShawn Stevenson | BooksThe Model Health ShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I am Yom Le Van Zant and I'll be your host for The R Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. There's y'all are just floppin' around like fish out of water. Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spawn on the iHeart video app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of

the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Lewis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Join the journey soon.

Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week, we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On paper we're supposed to be more evolved and intelligent than we've ever been.

And people were like, well, we're living longer though. No. No. We're the first generation. And recorded human history that is not going to outlive the generation before us. It is now reversed. By treating symptoms, we can keep people alive. And what's happening is we're not really living longer. We're dying longer. We're extending the suffer. living longer, we're dying longer. We're extending the suffering. Hey everyone, welcome back to on purpose. I am so excited to be talking to you today. I can't believe it. My new book, Eight Rules of Love, is out and I cannot wait to share with you. I am so, so excited for you to read this book,

for you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to eight rulesoflove.com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book.

And I'd love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour. Love rules. Go to jsheddytor.com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more. I can't wait to see you this year. I am so excited to share today's episode with you. This is a guest that I've been messaging, connecting with for a while, we're finally here. So it's always a great feeling when you're finally sitting in the studio with someone that you've wanted to talk to, interview, gain their insights

for a long time. And he's a real expert. He's a true, deep expert. And you know how much I love mining, the mind and the energy of someone who's so deeply rooted in the work they do. And today's guest is none other than Sean Stevenson, the author of the USA Today National

Best Seller, Eat Smarter, and the International Best Selling Book Sleep Smarter. He's also the creator of the Model Health Show featured as the number one health podcast in the US with millions of listeners, downloads each year. A graduate of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, Sean studied business, biology, and nutritional science, and became the co-founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance. Sean has been featured in Forbes Fast Company, the New York Times, Muscle and Fitness, ABC News, ESPN, and many other major media outlets. Today I'm excited to speak to him about his book Eat Smarter and his Journey. You can order the book as we're speaking. If you're someone who's

been focusing on your diet to improve it for your body, your mind, your relationships, your brain, then this is the episode for you. Sean, welcome to On Purpose. Thank you for being here and thank you for writing this book. It is such an honor to be here. You make everything sound so much better as well. You have to live it. So, you know, it's been amazing, but I mean, we've been messaging, we've been wanting

to get together, we're finally here, and I was, we've been messaging, we've been wanting to get together, where we're finally here. And I was just saying to you offline that my physical health journey has been very interesting because I almost ignored it for a long time, because I was so focused on the mind, and the soul, and the heart. And my wife was my educator, and my coach, when it came to my physical health.

And so whenever I'm sitting with someone who deeply understands food and nutrition, I'm very fascinated and open book because I know there's something I can improve about my health, whether it's through my gut or my brain. But I want to start with a bit about you. And you know, when you were younger, you were diagnosed, and I won't give it away, you can share about you. And you know, when you were younger, you were diagnosed. And I won't give it away. You can share about it. But you were diagnosed and told that there might not be a way of fixing or solving something. Now I can't imagine what that feels like hearing that when you're younger. And I'm guessing at that time, you didn't have the skills you have today. So can you take us back to

that moment and just explain to us what you went through and how that sparked your journey? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we're a product of our environment, but we're also creators of our environment once we become aware of it. And so I was just replicating what I was seeing around me, which was a lot of dysfunction, which was a lot of ill health. And I kind of was like the one in my family that had the potential to make it. And what it was was in the environment that I was in in the inner city and being in poverty, which I even say that kind of with the parentheses here in the United States, poverty is very different.

You still probably have a TV, a car, you know, when much of the world is living on a couple dollars a day. But, you know, we were struggling to get by. In this environment, all I saw was the opportunity for me to, you know, go to college, which I'd never met anybody that went to college, let alone graduated. Except my teachers was through athletics. And so I did really well in school,

but I just saw sports was gonna be my way to get a scholarship. And when I was 15 years old, I ran a 4, 5, 40, which is like NFL combine caliber, you know, and I was doing really great in track as well. But fate had other plans for me. It was actually at track practice when I had the first glimpse of what was to come. And so I was doing a 200 meter time trial, which 200 meters is half the track. And the time trial was just me and my coach, and I took off, and I was coming around the curve of the track into the straightaway, and my hip broke. And I didn't realize it at the time because I just kind of came up, limping. I thought maybe I pulled a muscle. I'd never really been injured before. But it took a

couple of days and I went and got a scan done because I just couldn't turn my legs over. I went to see a PT and a physician, and they put the scan up the x-ray and it's just my iliac crest bone was just floating off in space. I was like, oh, that's the problem right there. And what I went through was something called standard of care. All right, standard of care, which is not really looking at what is the cause of this thing, but let's treat these symptoms, right? So I got some insides, some non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, I got some crutches, which was cool. I got to get out of class early and take the school elevator. But nobody stopped to ask, how did a kid break his hip from running?

And fast forward, I experienced almost a dozen more injuries the next two years. I just couldn't stay on the football field or on the track. And my body was just breaking down. two years. I just couldn't stay on the football field or on the track and my body was just breaking down. And so my vision of playing at the next level was just vanquished. Fortunately, academically, I got a bunch of scholarships, I got to go to school that I want to go to, I was gonna walk on and red shirt and football. But this is where I get that diagnosis. So I was 20 years old and I was diagnosed with something called degenerative disc disease and degenerative bone disease.

So basically, an advanced arthritic condition in my spine. And this is usually reserved for people who are much older. And so I was 19, 20 years old. The reason that I went into the doctor was I just couldn't, I couldn't extend my leg. I was always in a lot of pain. And whenever I was standing up, I'd get this like, Thor lightning bolt shooting down my leg. And whenever I was stand up, I'd get this like Thor lightning bolt shooting down my leg. And it was just miserable. And if you can imagine this, when you're in pain,

when you stand up, how about you just don't stand up, right? So I was doing everything I could to avoid standing up. And so I sat a lot. I was constantly laying down or playing video games. I was in college still. and it just got progressively worse because your body really works on this use that are a losing basis. So not only was my spine deteriorating, the rest of me was atrophying as well. And so to really put the icing on the cake of the story, when I went in and see my physician and he gave me this diagnosis, he looked me right in my eyes and he told me that this situation was incurable, right? Because for me being an athlete, I was just like, all right, what do we do to fix this? And he put his hand on my shoulders like, I'm sorry son. This is something that just happens and I'm sorry it happened to you

And that on my shoulders like, I'm sorry son. This is something that just happens and I'm sorry it happened to you and That today I realized that goes against basic laws of physics. Like there's nothing that just happens. You know, there's a cause and effect. And I didn't, it didn't register to me when he first set it. It just didn't, it didn't make sense. So I rejected it. And I asked him this specific question, Jay.

And I have no grounds for asking him this question, but I asked him, does this have anything to do with what I'm eating? Should I change the way that I'm exercising? And he looked at me like I was from another planet. He was like, this has nothing to do with what you're eating. This is something that just happens. And a little sidebar, and I didn't talk about this

for many years, but my physician, he was obese and he was clearly struggling with his own health. Not to say that he wasn't qualified to give me advice, but he was clearly struggling himself. But I took his advice because he was the expert. In him saying that this was my lot in life, what he invoked was something called a no-cebo effect, which we can come back and talk about in a moment. But the bottom line was, he said that this has nothing to do with what I'm eating, but he wrote me a prescription to eat some pills. This has nothing to do with what you're putting

in your mouth. Go ahead and put these in your mouth. So that was the level of thinking that I was dealing with. Fast word of story. After leaving there, I went from a nuisance of a pain to chronic debilitating pain. Because now I know that I have this thing, this is my identity, I'm this sick person, I'm gonna be in pain for the rest of my life. He told me that. And so for the next two years, I did as little as I possibly could. And he told me, he gave me permission.

That's the big thing people don't realize. If you've been struggling your whole life and somebody gives you permission to stop struggling, just nobody's gonna blame you. You got this bad thing that happened. Just take this free pass, this hall pass, and just ride it out. It took two years, which, you know,

some people never get it. And some people get it a little bit faster, but it took me two years. And over these two years, eating what I call the tough diet, typical university food, I was continuing the same behaviors and I'd gained a bunch of weight now.

Because not only was I eating the same things but now I'm inactive and so I became much fluffier, I've lovingly say, version of myself and I didn't recognize the person I saw in the mirror and that was one of those breaking moments for me. It's just like I didn't even recognize who I was for me. It's just like, I didn't even recognize who I was. And after those two years, it's usually an event or, or a person or something that becomes a catalyst for that change. And for me, it was my grandmother, you know, and she was always checking on me those two years. And if you're a young kid, you're just like, I'm fine, grandma, you know, but I wasn't fine. And she knew it. She was the one who really advocated for me. She's the one who believed in me more than anybody that I was going to do something great. And here I was, living in Ferguson, Missouri, in this one bedroom apartment, sleeping on the mattress on the floor, overweight,

and chronic pain can't sleep at night. And my life didn't match up to my blueprint of what success was going to look like. And so it was in that moment that I decided to get well. And most people don't really get that, Jay. It's just like, it sounds so simple, right? But the reality is oftentimes we don't decide. It's more like, we'll see what happens. It's like wishful thinking. It's like, you know, I wish, you know, this would happen. But when you decide something, you really cut away the possibility of that of anything else but that thing. And even the word, if you break it down, day meaning from and chideeer, which means to cut, right? So you cut away the possibility of anything else but that thing. And I decided to get well. And so the last little part we could talk

about how I did this, but it was from six weeks from that moment of decision. And I had lost about 18 pounds, which is not not typical but I was always kind of the skinny kid in my family so my fat jeans definitely kicked on but you know the weight just came off of me once I started to implore a few really foundational principles you know with my nutrition with movement and the pain I've been experiencing that had me in terror for two years was going and it was about nine months later when I got a scan done. And I completely reversed the the degeneration. My two herniated disc I retracted on their own. My bone density was normal. And it was as if the thing had never happened. So and by that experience happening to me and seeing the stories of people coming up to

me at my university asking me to help them because they saw the change. You know, I didn't look like a guy who lost weight. I looked like somebody who's really healthy. And to hear their stories, like people saying, telling them, you're going to live with this disease forever, diabetes or, you know, heart disease, you're going to be on the statin, whatever the case might be. And I had this experience where I was told this negative thing was going to be your story and to no longer have that as my story I had this level of authority that I couldn't really put a finger on and people were attracted to that So my life just went from being very self-centered in my pain to being Other centered and being of service and I found every way that I could to help others and it landed me here with you

That's beautiful, man. Thank you for I know how hard it is to synthesize a life's work in a few minutes. And of course, I'm hoping that everyone who's listening and watching is going to get better acquainted with you if they're not already listeners. But I'm intrigued by when you made that decision, what was the first thing you did? Because I often find that, first of all, it's hard to make the decision. But when you've made the decision, then the first thing you do has such a big impact on momentum and acceleration. What was the first thing you did?

That's so powerful, Jay, because the decision is instantaneous, but what takes long is getting ourselves to the place where we make the decision, right? And so the first decision that I made, which I didn't realize this consciously two years later is I changed the habitual question that I was asking.

And today I know that there's this really phenomenal process of the brain evokes called instinctual elaboration. The human brain is always trying to answer questions that we pose it. It's just automatic. Our mutual friends, Jim Quick, we've talked about this many times. And the question that I was asking was unconscious all the time was why me? Why is this happening to me? Why won't somebody help me? And so my brain is constantly scanning my internal and external environment to affirm why me, why I'm unhelpable, why I'm not deserving of being healthy, right? So I'm just getting all this data in as to why my life sucks because I'm looking for it. And so in that moment of decision, and again, I wasn't aware, I wasn't consciously aware

of this, but I just asked this question very simple. I asked, instead of asking why me, I asked, what can I do to feel better? Because I just saw a series of other doctors, which I highly encourage people to, if you get a bad bill of goods like that, get a second third opinion before taking any drastic action. Because I was just talking

with Tony Robbins about this recently, but there was a big meta analysis done by the Mayo Clinic and they found that when you get that initial diagnosis, it's only the same less than 20% of the time is the second diagnosis, the same as the first diagnosis. And often it's radically different. All right, so it's somewhere in the ballpark of like 18% of the time is the same as the first diagnosis. And often it's radically different. All right, so it's somewhere in the ballpark of like 18% of the time it's the same. So that being said, you also wanna seek counsel from somebody who's not in the same line of thinking as well.

You know, somebody, ideally who has the same goal as you, like if you're diagnosed with this thing and you don't wanna have this thing, maybe that's the person you need to go and talk to. But I was seeking counsel from the same type of thinker. I asked this question, what is it that I can do to feel better? What is it that I can do?

And this was kind of an audacious thing to be healthier than I've ever been. That night was the first night that I slept through the night without medication in those two years. I just felt this peace, you know, and I woke up and this is the thing too, it's not like again, like a unicorn came out and like the clouds parted and you know, it's happily ever after. I put a plan together and that plan entailed three specific things. The first thing was changing

my nutrition. I knew just on a very rudimentary level that I needed to quote lose weight, right? Because I was just like logically from having this pressure on my disc, let me take some of this pressure off by losing some of this mass that I'm carrying. But I'll be honest with you, Jay, the first thing that I did was slim fast, right? So because of marketing, like I saw the TV, that's what I was acclimated to. So it was like a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, a sensible dinner, right? And it was disgusting, right? It was terrible.

It only worked for a couple of days that I did it. But by me asking the questions, the right people, the right situations, the right book start to show up. And oftentimes those things have been there the whole time, but I just wasn't attuned to them. And I had a friend of mine that I had known her for years. And she was in Chowar Practice College. And we just like kicked it, you know,

but and I just thought she was weird, you know, we heard her in a friend's, you know, and she took me to Wild Oats, right, which has since been bought up by Whole Foods. And so now I'm in this environment where I'm seeing all these different supplements and foods and there's like grass inside. I'm like, why is there grass inside, you know,

as we grass? But there was a book there, a nutrition prescription, and it had all these peer reviewed, and I was in college, so I'm versed in research, and especially doing what I was doing in college, and there was peer-reviewed data on regenerating herniations and degenerative disc disease. And there are all these nutrients that I had never even heard of, like all I knew about for bone density, for example, was calcium because of marketing. There was like omega-3s, sulfur bearing amino acid, silica, all these other things that I wasn't getting anywhere in my drive-through diet. And so I

start to, again, I went from slim fast to being a natural pill-pomper, right? So it's just like, I need these nutrients. Let me just take these supplements. Again, missing the mark, but it's taking steps towards it. And ultimately, of course, that's very expensive, but I finally realized like, what have humans been doing the longest? We're getting these nutrients through food, not synthetic isolated versions of those things.

So I started to seek out all the foods that had these nutrients and just began to like flood my system with these foods. So that was number one. I changed what I was eating. And literally, and there's a, I've got to share this now, but we'll probably circle back to this. It's one of the most important tenets. Every single cell in our body is made from the food that we eat. Every cell. And so we have the ability to make our bodies out of really low quality materials or out of the best stuff possible. You know, and so I was making my tissues out of absolute garbage. I'm not exaggerating the slightest I ate fast food every day, every day because again,

I lived in Ferguson, Missouri. I was surrounded by low quality food and processed food and liquor stores. That's all I knew, right? And it was cheap. Again, being on a college budget, that's what I could afford, which And it was cheap. Again, being on a college budget, that's what I could afford, which we got to talk about that the economies of scale too. So anyway, so I'm flaying my tissues with really high quality stuff now. And the body is so intelligent. Once you give it the right

materials, it knows what to do. It's often just us getting out of the way. And so that was one. Number two, the low hanging fruit for me that I had some education on was movement and exercise. And being in pain, the worst thing to do is to do nothing. There is a time when, you know, you have a state of inflammation, like, if I have these two herniated discs, I'm not going to go and deadlift, you know, three, fifteen. That's not a good idea. But after a couple of days, and I'm functional, I need to do something because the body movement

is one of the primary drivers of healing, of assimilation of nutrients, of elimination of metabolic waste products, all these different things require movement, right? Life is movement. And so I just went to the gym at the university gym, just did what I can, which was I started off on a stationary bike.

A week later, I started doing a little bit, walking on the treadmill. A week later, I picked up a couple of weights and all of that was driving the good nutrition I was bringing in deeper into myself, right? And the third thing was my biggest struggle that two years was sleeping at night. And I was just like, I gotta find a way to get some rest because I was chronically tired. And I didn't have to try to do that one. A principle from my first book, Sleep's Martyrs, that a great night of sleep

starts the moment you wake up in the morning, right? So all these good things I was doing, exercising, changing my nutrition and getting access to sunlight, all these really simple things led to me sleeping better in the evening. And once I started sleeping, I got better so fast because it is the most anabolic stage that a human being can be in. Outside of meditation, everything else is really catabolic.

If you're up and active, you're catabolic. And so this is where your body is producing all these regenerative hormones and HGH and reparative enzymes. You know, once I, my sleep improved and my movement practice, but of course the biggest thing was my mind, you know, my change in perception of all these things, but that's really what the first domino was was changing the question and the right stuff that was already there, I can now see. I love how you've simplified it into the diet and nutrition, amplified it into diet and nutrition, the sleep, and then of course the movement aspect, which you know, the three key tenants and then grouped by the mindset and the approach.

I want to dive into some of those amazing insights that you share in this book because rightly said, our understanding of food, nutrients, vitamins, supplements has been so rudimentary for so long. And even today, I think, as you rightly said, there's so much being marketed at us that you kind of follow the latest trend or the latest diet or the latest fat, only to find that it's not sustainable or that it doesn't really cure how you're feeling. And I think we've started to realize that food can change how you feel. And I don't think we thought about that. We thought food is energy and you just keep putting it in. I love the idea of how we're building ourselves through bad materials or good materials. Why is it important, as you talk about in the book, to use power or food to reboot your metabolism? What are the benefits of rebooting

your metabolism and what are methods through diet and nutrition that boost on metabolism? For everyone listening, it should always be what is the thing, right? So when we hear these terms like metabolism, we often have a certain association with it. That's my point. Yeah, exactly. And so it's usually going to be tied to weight loss. And it's a huge mistake because metabolism is really everything.

There's a whole field of immuno metabolism. You know, your immune system has its own metabolism, where it's building new immune cells, where it's functioning at a certain level, where there's cellular waste products and the list goes on and on. All these things are metabolism. So life itself is driven by metabolism, but this is a huge mistake, even in the weight loss domain, when we're just thinking about food and nutrition and diet in terms of changing our metabolism. This is why with the book, I gave people what they want, which again, that's the on ramp,

but food controls so much more than just our metabolism. It also controls our cognitive function. Our emotional intelligence is highly influenced by our nutrition. That's one of the main things I wanted to talk with you about as well. And also it affects our relationships and how we relate to other people. The list goes on and on. Food isn't just food, it's information, you know. And so as far as the metabolism side is concerned, what I wanted to do was break

down how the process of metabolism actually works. How does weight loss work, right? How does fat loss work? Where does fat go? Like when I quote, lose weight, where the hell's the weight go? You know what I mean? So I'm taking people through that process. And I use analogies to make it make sense because one of the things I learned from Tony was one of the fastest ways of learning, which I was doing this, but I didn't realize it. It's take something that you don't know and connect it to something that you do know, right? And so I use this analogy of going to the movies and using it as a cellular movie theater and how the process of fat loss actually works.

And so we've got these key ushers that are making things happen. You know, you come into the movie theater and you've got these specific enzymes. So we've got hormone sensitive light pays, for example. And hormone sensitive light pays is the enzyme required to actually open up your cell so that it releases stored energy and you know, triglycerides stored fat to be used for fuel. Nothing's happening without this usher. All right, so that's required. Then we've got another usher who's putting fat in the seats, right? Lipoprotein light pays, right?

And so, but then we've got the managers of the usher, which are insulin and glucogon, which there's so much more, but I'm just giving a little snapshot. No, this is great. I love this analogy. It's a brilliant analogy. So making it make sense to me.

So that's a good thing. I'm the dummy in the room. So this is great. Yeah. So insulin and glucogon they're actually brothers, right? So in they're both from their loving mother mispanky is all right? So insulin is really about Management and always looking for the worst possible scenario, right? So they're all about saving up for rainy day, get storing as much as possible. So we're all saving we're all good. Glucogan is more of a free thinker, more of a,

go with the flow type of vibe and it's cool with letting go of some of this store and energy. And so Glucoganic to make a summation of these. So insulin is the biggest hormonal driver of a storing fat in our cells or storing energy in our cells. When people hear the word insulin, we often think about diabetes, right? Because a lack, type one diabetes is a lack of producing insulin. The mother pancreas, the beta cells are not producing

insulin, which is absolutely horrendous. This means your cells can't get energy and you'll literally just wither away. It's a terrible way to die. Type two diabetes, which is the most prevalent here in the United States. Right now in the United States, about 130 million citizens here in the U.S. have type two diabetes or prediabetes. Wow. It's insane, but this is not a condition where you're no longer producing insulin.

This is a condition where your insulin sensitivity, the ability of that cell to get the signal has been tampered down, right? Because insulin has been so abundant, because the blood sugar has been so abundant, right? And so it's it, but here's the thing, and it's a really beautiful thing that even a condition like that, it's the body adapting to keep you alive So type two diabetes and we get this label that you have this chronic disease and you're no good or you know You're you're tainted or you're broken It's actually there's really intelligent adaptation by the human body Because it's adapting the way that your metabolism works under unideal circumstances

Right, so it's beautiful, it's amazing. The problem, however, is that we've been led to believe that that is the end story, that your body is stupid, and it can't shift and create another expression. And so now it's common knowledge. Back in the day, I've been in this field almost 20 years, I'm about to hit my 20 year anniversary. And we couldn't publicly say even another framework, I mean, like you

got to be very kind of a pure diabetes, right? Today, it's common knowledge that you can reverse this condition. So you got insulin driving people into the seats, right? Keep in the theater full. And we got glucagon open up the doors to allow people to go out and kick it at after party, right? So these are two big hormonal drivers of metabolism. We've got some enzymatic ones I hit a little bit, but then we've got the internal cash year as well, which is your liver in many ways. So people don't think about these things and this beautiful dance is taking place.

We just want to get that fad off, right? And oftentimes we associate that with like really working hard, right? Restricting, cutting things away. You can't have deprivation, right? All those things, those terms don't feel good, right? It's very against human nature. And on the other side, you have to abuse yourself.

You have to exercise your face off. You've got to just, you know, this tenant that I was taught in my universe, I paid for this education, Jay, at a private, at a private university, the first day of school in this big auditorium, nutritional science class, the teacher told us that if you want to manage your metabolism, if you want to manage your body weight, just manage your calories. That's all you have to do is control the calories, right? He was overweight as well, by the way, all right? And now, again, it's not that he's trying to be an aferist. This is what he'd learned. And at the time, we were in the food pyramid. All right. So this is when I went to school back in, this was 97. It's changed a little bit. Like we went from like the food pyramid

to my plate, but still really the same principles. But to say that calories control everything about you or your metabolism or your ability to lose weight is very myopic. It's tunnel vision. And people don't really realize, and that's what I spent the nice segment of the book really diving into the beautiful history behind calories.

And like, how is that a thing? That people plant this flag? And I know this, I was one of them, right? Being a nutritional scientist and also, somebody who's working as a strengthing a Disney coach at the university, these, I was just replicating and regurgitating what I was taught.

And it worked for some people, not for others. This is what it sounds like inside the box card. I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunged into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train not where I'm gonna end up and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom this community.

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I don't know if you've talked to him before. I know who he is, ma'am. The biology of belief, right? So epigenetics, right? So this is, he's the person more than anybody's pushing in a popular culture. That means above genetic control, right? But epicolytic control is above caloric control. There are certain principles that control what your body does with the calories you consume. And this would be so logical if we think about it. And so just a couple of those, one of those is the quality of food itself, all right, so we hear this, that not all calories are created equal, but we have really sound science on this now. I share one of the studies in the book, and again, this was a peer-reviewed study. And what they did was they took test

subjects and they wanted to see what would happen with their metabolism when they eat a meal of processed foods versus a meal of whole foods, right? And so the processed food, they're both sandwiches, by the way, all right? So it's not like super glorified process versus whole, but the whole food sandwich was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese. The processed food sandwich was white bread and cheese product. And cheese product is what most people are eating.

That's like craft. It's, they can't legally call it cheese, it's called craft singles. There's not enough cheese in the cheese, you know, which is really messed up. Wow. Yeah. And so they consume each of these sandwiches and they track their caloric expenditure. Right.

So, and this is something to get to just the end part of like where does the weight go. We breathe most of the weight that we lose out. We expel it through our lungs. Our lungs are on also excretion organ as well. We don't really think about that, but they are. And so anyways, so they're tracking the out go of energy after eating these two sandwiches. And what they found was the people eating, when they ate the processed food sandwich, there was a 50% reduction in their body's expenditure of calories. Something happened by eating that food that made their body hold on to more of the energy they just consumed. And what it really was was a hormonal clog to put it in a simple term. It changed the hormonal cascade

neuro transmitter cascade organ function in a way that made the body more stingy at holding on to this very abnormal energy that was coming in. And so again, 50% reduction is massive. And how often are people trying to lose weight, counting calories, but eating processed foods, counting the point system and all these things, which can be wonderful, but we have to address the food quality. So this was published in food and nutrition research, by the way, if anybody wants to.

Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm so glad you shared that with me, because yeah, it's easy to be like, this is healthy food. This is unhealthy food, but it's even deeper than that. And I think the gold standard, which I think you set, which I really identify with is, I just know I want to be healthier. Like what I've been saying is I want to be healthier.

I want to be more informed because if something happens to me, I don't want it to be something that I can and will continue to monitor because I want to be as healthy so I can continue to do my service in the world. That's where my personal intention goes. I know one of the things that people are struggling with a lot right now is inflammation. you talk about the microbiome in the book as well and the connection, but walk me through where inflammation is created from and how it connects to the microbiome in the book. Yeah. The term again, what is it? Yeah.

Inflammation, the term itself is derived from a word essentially meaning set on fire, right? So there's this fire taking place in the human body. And just to lean and connect inflammation to metabolism, let's do that. One of the studies that I referred to as well was looking at, and this was published in the annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. They were looking at what was happening with inflammation in the brain, leading to accelerated weight gain. All right. Now, this is another thing when people are trying to lose weight gain. All right.

Now, this is another thing when people are trying to lose weight. Nobody's telling them we need to deal with the inflammation in your brain. And so what the researchers uncovered was that essentially inflammation in the brain was leading to more belly fat accumulation and more disruption to their metabolism. But the key was more belly fat accumulation and obesity. Once people were mentioning into obesity, it was leading to more brain inflammation. So this becomes this vicious circle, right?

And again, we're not looking at, we need to address the inflammation in your brain, why is this happening? Well, your brain is controlling your body, far more than anything else. And there's an internal thermostat that's even controlling your metabolic rate, which is based in your hypophalamus, which is kind of considered the master gland of

the body. And the hypophalamus not only is, is kind of like a thermostat for your metabolism, but also is a thermostat for your body temperature for your sleep cycles and the list goes on and on. It's like a circadian controller, right? circadian medicine is popping right out too. And so paying attention and so specifically the researchers were denoting hypothelamic inflammation leading to all these problems. So what's causing that brain inflammation? Obesity in and of itself is increasing the rate of inflammation.

So right now in the United States, we're not going to the door of 250 million of our citizens being overweight or obese, right? It's beyond epidemic. It's insane. Rest assured, if we're venturing into obesity, your brain is suffering because of it. And I also noted another study where we're seeing this correlation. I talked to Daniel Aiman who wrote the... Yeah, I love Daniel Aiman.

He's been on the podcast twice, yeah. Yeah, I love him so much. Yeah, he's awesome. But he's accumulated so much data. And, but there's also some peer-review studies as well. Looking at once our waist size is increasing, it's correlated with the decrease in our brain size. So as our waist circumference goes up, our brain size goes down, the volume of our brain, which is not good at all. And so there's this huge connection with these two.

But also what's driving this inflammation is the foods that we're eating, obviously, as well. And obesity itself, just to give a little snapshot like, how does that work? How's obesity creating more inflammation? Our fat cells are pretty, they're pretty damn amazing. If without our fat cells being as intelligent as they are, we wouldn't have made it as humanity. It enabled us to go through times of famine and still survive.

But here's the thing, we live in a very different time now where more people are dying from excess than from deprivation. And so during this time of excess, our fat cells can actually grow 1000 times their size. It's crazy. They're like, wow. I don't want to disrespect them by calling them little trash cans, but they're kind of like these internal trash cans that can... They keep collecting. Yes, like these hefty, hefty sense sacks, like really good trash bags that are filling up. And as that happens, it's sending out a distress signal because the fat cells were never made to contain

that much stored energy. And so it's sending out a kind of a false distress signal to your immune system, thinking that you're infected, you know, your fat cells are chronically infected. This is why we see epidemic levels of inflammation measured by things like sea reactive protein and folks as we venture into obesity. So the fat cells themselves are big contributor to inflammation, but to lean into food a little bit, one of the biggest culprits as being highlighted today. And there's, with any of the stuff I talk about Jay,

there's always conflicting information. Of course, of course, yeah, I get that. And the average person doesn't, though, you know, it's just like, this is the end all be all. What I do is, I'm a research scientist primarily. I'll go and proactively look for things that rebuke what I believe that prove what I'm saying otherwise or other than.

And it takes a lot of courage to go and look for things to prove you wrong. But what I'll do is I'll look at the variety of information and what is the majority of data that we have say. That's a better place for us to stand on and educate from, right? But one of the biggest culprits and this is what the majority of data says is these highly refined oxidized seed oils that have become so prevalent in our food system and again I get to work with the best people in the world in these subjects like Dr. Kate Shanahan It's really a pioneering voice in this field and she's you know

She worked with the Lakers and held with Kobe Bryant, got him on these protocols, extending his career, all these great things. And so she has that fame and credibility there, but she's also a brilliant scientist in somebody who's very versed in metabolism. But one of the things that she shared with me was that this particular study, which was crazy, they looked at biopsies, right? So you can actually go and look inside of what a fat cell contains back in the earlier part

of the 1900s and saw what is the makeup of the average person's fat cell? And about 2% of our fat cells back then were made of these polyunsaturated fatty acids or poufus, right? Today, the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids that make up the average person's fat cell is up to 25 or even 30%. So it's went from 2% to 25%. So literally the ingredients that make us as a species has changed dramatically. And what is it about these particular fats? Like how is so much of it making up the ingredients that make us up? And it's because they're in everything.

They're very cheap. They're rancid oxidized oil. They have no choice but to be those things. Like, getting the oil from corn, like, they're so little, and if people saw the process, which I highly encourage people to do, there's lots of videos. You could see the processing of canola oil or quote vegetable oil. I remember when my mom started using vegetable oil trying to get healthy, because my family, again, I was the skinning kid

in the family, everybody, pretty much everybody else in my family, at least about 80% of folks were obese. And so she started using vegetable oil, it sounds healthy, but it's not asparagus oil or broccoli oil. These are highly refined seed oils, corn oil, soy oil, canola oil, and to extract those oils, corn oil, soy oil, canola oil, and to extract those oils, it kind of looks like just mud. It just looks disgusting. It looks like this, like kind of like almost like gasoline type vibe to it. And they have to use bleaching agents and deodorizers. And

I cited a study in my book book and this was published in the journal Inhalation Toxicology and they found that just smelling those oils while cooking can damage your DNA. Wow. Crazy stuff. Just smelling. Just inhaling the fumes from it. Let alone actually putting it in your body.

Yes. So it's crazy. It's so crazy. And so for me it's just looking like this specific component, your body has to go into this kind of pro-inflammatory state to try to manage any insult. Inflammation is one of the most important things for our survival. It's kind of been given a bad name right now because we're dealing with chronic inflammation. But we need inflammation in order to just heal

for stuff you don't even know is going on. There are cells right now in your body that are dying off and recycling. There's always an inflammatory component, a catabolic component, and that's okay. But once we venture into chronic inflammation where these things are getting out of hand, that's where we start to see all manner of things go wrong. Wow. I mean, you know what? I find it so useful to be having this conversation with you because, and I hope everyone is listening and watching. I'm trying to ask the questions that I think we skip.

What does this actually mean? How does it actually affect us? Because right now we hear all these buzzwords and we look for the quick fix. All right, I've got inflammation, I do this to, you know, I'll callize it. I've got this, do this. Like, and we're always looking at that quick fix, that quick win, the quick solve. And actually, when I'm sitting here listening to him going, wow, there is just, of course, naturally, there's so much more to it. But we have to be so much more alert and vigilant,

which is where we struggle, because it's almost like there is no convenience now, because there's all this information, like you said, there's conflicting information. So if I'm listening to this show right now, and I want to create more energy in my life, I want to create more vibrancy in how I feel. What are some of the things that we're likely missing or that we're likely struggling with in our diet or nutritionally

that we could add to help start that process of at least feeling a bit more positive like we have a bit more control? We could stay right in the same lane and just swap out the oils that we're using with some intention. Researchers at Auburn found that olive oil, olio-canthol rich extra virgin olive oil is one of the few things that's been found to be highly effective at reducing inflammation of the brain, right? And also being able to help to heal the blood brain barrier. So what does this mean? The blood brain barriers kind of like Michio Kaku is kind of like a modern day Einstein, right? He was like the human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe. That's big. For him to say something like that,

that's really remarkable. Repeat that for us. The human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe. Right? And the cool thing is we all have one. We're not very good at using it. But we all have this really miraculous organ. And your body is very protective of it. Because again it's controlling everything about you. It's controlling your metabolism. For example, it's the only major organ is fully encased and hard in hard bone, right? So we've got this built in helmet to try to protect it. We've got the blood brain barrier because everything that we eat, the last place to actually allow nutrient sand is going to be your brain, right?

Because it has a blood brain barrier. It's kind of like an internal security system. Or I like to think about it like a toll booth. Right? So certain nutrients get express pass, right? If anybody ever is live where they have tolls and you get an express pass that can go right into the brain. Most other things, they're going to meet the toll booth and they're not going to be able to get through because the guard there is like, you know, doing the rock Johnson, it's like clones of him

and Vin Diesel or whatever. So it's just like highly unlikely that you can get into the brain. It's like an exclusive club. It's very exclusive. And so to make it into the brain, only specific things are able to do that. One of the big issues today leading to more inflammation into the brain, only specific things are able to do that.

One of the big issues today leading to more inflammation is the degradation we're breaking down our own blood brain barrier, this internal security system, by eating all these abnormal foods. The blood brain barrier, a big aspect of its regulation, is through the fast that we consume. Right? And so, again, eating these really low quality oils and making our cells out of these things were degrading how our body functions. And so what the researchers found again was that extra virgin olio canthol rich olive oil

is one of those foods that's really healing and anti-inflammatory and also can help to heal the blood brain barrier. That's crazy because for me again, like I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't care if olive oil is cooler or not, if it his color. I don't care. You don't, you don't own olive oil. It's so miraculous. But then you just look at what if humans have been doing the longest and how do you make olive oil? You crush olives. That's it. It's not like the process that these other oils, these seed oils have to go through again with the, the odorizers and the bleaching agents

and the high heat, as a matter of fact, extra virgin olive oil, that means that it's not heat processed. All right. So it's even paying attention to the very volatile nature of those fats and its stored in dark glass bottles. Because it's even photosensitive, it's light sensitive, can break down and degrade those oils, right?

So in humans, we have documentation for thousands of years have been consuming olive oil, right? And so that's one of the great principles to lean back into, which is like, what have humans been doing in the longest? Let's do that. You know, what got us here? Because what we're doing now is not working, right? So that's one of the great foods that can help to reduce inflammation. So swapping out those oils, being intentional about it, the best way to consume these oils

is going to be through like finishing dishes, like adding some olive oil on top or using it to make salads. Cooking with it you can moderate heat is okay, but for cooking we need things that have more saturation that are more stable. So they're not giving off all of these, these kind of pro-inflammatory, oxidative compounds, right? So that would be like coconut oil or ghee or grass-fed butter.

Avocado oil is also rising in popularity now as well. But just to throw a couple more for reducing inflammation, the cruciferous family of vegetables have been found to reduce inflammation specifically in the brain, broccoli. You know, again, I put peer-peer-peer-viewed data to show that this food that's just like super common can help to reduce brain information, right? So yeah, I can go on and on, but those are just a couple of things. No, no, no, this is fantastic.

And I want everyone who's listening and watching to know that all these reviews, the research is in the book Eat Smarter, which is what Sean's referencing. If you are listening and you don't see me holding the cover and holding the book, you can order it right now. And I, I deeply recommend that because the level of detail of insight that Sean has is so powerful, it should not be underestimated. This isn't a new diet book or a fat book on like, you know, here's what you need to do, three things you need to do tomorrow.

It's not like that. There is like deep research, reflection, introspection that Sean's done and study he's done. And so, you know, I'm going in and allowing him to share depth on certain parts, but the book is full of these insights. She want to want to talk a bit about stress and the brain and then diet, because you also talk about the impact of food on the brain, brain on food, but also our emotional

states. We all know what emotional eating is. We've all picked up a tub of ice cream or picked up sugars when we're low in energy or, you know, we've been there. We may even get drawn in that direction still today. One thing I find intriguing that I'd love to learn from you is how much is stress in the brain causing some of these challenges within the body and can food be used to work backwards almost or does stress need to be dealt with in different ways? Yeah, that's such a great question. Again, what is stress?

We have to look at that and we tend to put stress in this one box cognitively. Most times people associate it with like life stress, like work stress, you know, work of stress in me out, our relationship is stressing me out. But those are just a couple of factors that go into your overall stress load as a human being. So all of these inputs are stressors. And for example, exercise is a stressor. It's known as a hermitic stressor, which that means that if you're able to recover from

said exercise, you get benefit. The kind of like what doesn't kill me makes me stronger principle. But if you put on intense exercise on top of relationship stress, work stress, spiritual stress, right? Feeling not on purpose or cut a drift or disconnected. You add that on to diet stress, the stress coming from the abnormal food you may be consuming. The environmental stress, right? Right now this is dope. Like we can record, we got all this technology, but all of these energies are just running in and out of ourselves at paces and degrees that we just don't understand yet.

Right, so we're all intermingling with these energies that we've never been exposed to again as humans. So the environment itself is going to be adding an additional stress. Gravity! Gravity is trying to kill you. Like, you literally is trying to weigh us down, you know, in a sense. If you want to look at it like that But we are resilient we can we've adapted to it, you know, but the John Carter I don't know if you know about that that that book and that's that movie Disney didn't do very well But I think it's on Disney plus John Carter. No, so this guy teleports Accidentally like from civil war vibes to being on Mars.

And on Mars, he's like superhuman because gravity's different. So he's like jumping around, you know, like, it's really cool to think about gravity has conditioned us in a certain way and we're resilient against it. So environmental stress goes on there and I can go on and on.

All of these stress inputs create your overall stress load as a human being. Now the issue is that man I've had the opportunity to work with so many people in a one-on-one context but all you know groups and the books and all the stuff but the most overlooked thing that I've seen when people are wanting to you know get off of their blood pressure medication, the scina prills or the statins or you know metform off of there, blood pressure medication, the centiprils or the statins or, you know, metformin for diabetes or the antidepressants, whatever it might be, the nutrition and the exercise can only go so far. The number one thing that I've seen that people overlook is the

impact of stress because you can over each away into disease, you can under move your way into disease, you can under sleep your way into disease, you can also overstretch your way into disease. You can under sleep your way into these disease and you can also overstretch your way into disease. The problem is that stress is invisible, you know, in a sense. Like exercise, we know what that is. Like it's physical. We're interacting with it. Food is like you're putting stuff in. Like it's visceral, something you could touch. Because stress doesn't have that aspect, we negate it. But truly, and just to kind of loop back to the story with that physician and the Nosebo effect, wow.

So everybody's heard at this point of the placebo effect, to some degree. I was going to come back to this from glad you got in there. And it's amazing, right? It's amazing. So just on average, if we look at the breadth of peer-view data that we have, on average, placebo is about a 30% effective in clinical trials. So fake drugs, sham surgeries, fake treatments

are about 30% effective on average. Some studies much higher, like 80% effective in some studies on antidepressants. People are not actually getting something that has a real treatment. They just believe that they're taking the drug. Now this is very important. It has to be coming. No, it doesn't, it doesn't have to.

But in these trials, they're coming from an authority figure, right? And so one of the things that I talk about in the book is the impact that your thoughts have on your body's metabolism. This was done by Dr. Alia Krum and her team at Stanford at the time. It was the milkshake study. They blended up these milkshakes and they labeled them different amounts of calories even though they were all the same. Some of them were the indulgent milkshakes, with they labeled like 700 calories.

Some were the smart shakes, where they labeled it like 200 calories, but all of them were really like 450 calories or something like that. And so what they found was that, people who believed they were having the indulgent milkshake, they had a much greater secretion or suppression

of grelin, the hunger hormone. So they're more satiated because they believe they're consuming something that has a lot more caloric energy. And on the other side, the people who thought they were eating the sense of shake, the sensible milkshake, their grelin levels didn't budge at all, which means they're going to be hungry again very soon after having that milkshake, their gorilla levels didn't budge at all, which means they're going to be hungry again very soon after having that milkshake, right? So that's the power of the mind to literally manipulate your metabolism, just in that one snapshot. And I've got so much more data, right? So your thoughts determine what's happening with your metabolism.

So going back to the placebo effect. So placebo is being again, we've got data. A great book is Mind Over Medicine, Dr. Lissa Rankin, so many studies in there, but we've got data on placebo is being effective in cancer treatments, in surgeries for knees, like MCL repair. Like, we've got, there's so many crazy studies where, you know, they'll, because now you could even watch your surgery, where there, somebody will be watching their own surgery, but what they're doing is they're playing a different video, right? So they'll cut the person's knee open and just seal it back up without doing any actual therapeutic change.

And their knee problem will heal, right? Oftentimes better than the people who had the actual surgery, you know, a surgical change and an invention. So I know this sounds crazy and these are things for me. I'm a very analytical, logical person. So I wouldn't believe it unless I saw the data myself. So that's the power of the human mind, just a snapshot. Now here's the other thing. I don't want to call them evil, but there's a, there's a evil twin to the placebo effect. It's called the no-cebo effect. This is when you get a negative injunction that something bad is gonna happen. So a placebo is saying

you're gonna get this therapeutic benefit. You're gonna take this and your blood pressure is gonna normalize. Your depression is gonna go away. Your cancer is gonna dissolve. A no sebo effect is saying this is incurable. You have six weeks to live. You'll never walk again, right?

So these injunctions from an authority figure, and there was another study I cited from Alia Crom's team, they did a skin prick test where they used a histamine, you know, a histamine stimulator to create a rash on people's skin. And then they had an inert cream and they told the test subjects, either this cream is going to make your rash worse or this cream is going to make your rash better. Different people who told different things. Now what happened was, and this was true for like 90% of the test subjects, when they received that inert cream that had no therapeutic benefit and they told their rash will get worse within

10 minutes the rash got worse and spread. For other people within 10 minutes the rash minutes. The rash got better and nearly went away from most people just within 10 minutes of them getting this cream that does nothing. The biggest part of this was the benefit depended directly with how the person believed in the competence of the physician. Their rapport and belief in the person telling them about the thing impacted their physical response. The most. So again, who are you listening to?

Yeah. You know, and so for me, I had that Naseeb O'Effect in Junction. Like, he told me this was incurable. I'll be in pain the rest of my life. You know, I'll never walk normally again again all these things. And I believed it. But thankfully again, just like sometimes going through these things and hitting rock bottom is a good place to stand up from, you know. And being able to access, this is why people are such a gift, you know, like my grandmother was like a guiding light,

like a North Star for me. I didn't realize it at the time. I just thought she was being annoying, but just knowing that there's somebody who believes in me. Man, it just made the process so much easier, but the thing is you don't need anybody else to believe in. You can believe in yourself, you know? But it does take some revelation.

It does take a lot of work to be able to do that. But anyways, but just to put the icing on the cake with this, with stress and the impact that it can have on our bodies and our relationships, the reason that I don't talk about this off the J, but the reason I wrote this book was to address how food is affecting how we communicate with each other. Because you probably have noticed, we're living at a very divisive time right now.

There's so much divisiveness, there's so much agitation, there's so much infighting. When on paper, we should be more connected than ever. We all have the same access to the same data. Why is there so much arguing about it? And also people are becoming so polarized. They're going and planting their flag at one end of the other end, but truth, truthfully most people are here in the middle, but they're listening to people at these outer ends. But what's not being talked about is the fact

that, for example, there's a study done at the Ohio State University and it was looking at couples, you know, like I love my wife, she's my best friend. And, but we also, you know what I'm saying? We have stuff, you know? Like every couple. And the thing is, like we know our stuff now, because we often attribute it to the person, but what they did was they used glucose monitors

to see what happens when the person in the relationship, when they have abnormal blood sugar, how they respond to their partner. Yes. All right. And so what they found was, when people had, when their blood sugar was abnormal, you know, when they experienced a blood sugar crash, for example, which is normal, because again,

we're going hypoglycemic and then crashing because the way we eat today, the test subjects became much more aggressive towards their partner. Keyword aggressive, right? And here's the biggest thing because for me, it's just like, okay, that's a quality. But what's the end result? End result is they were far less likely to resolve their relationship. Wow. Conflicts. So that's the outcome because your blood sugars messed up. Now we think about this with kids, like, you know, their hyper, whatever, their cranky, you're just a big adult baby. You know, you get the same hard wiring. And so when we tend to be in conflict,

is when our biological needs are off, when we're tired, when we're hungry, these things we attribute to kids acting up like that, but we do that to each other. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so that was just one little glimpse into, like this is somebody that you love. And so with this little sidebar in the study they use like these dolls and poking pins in

the doll, how aggressive you are, a mad at your partner you are. So it's kind of creepy. Like, something like that. That's very creepy. So, but now here's how we branch this out globally. Researchers at Oxford University, they wanted to see what would happen by improving the nutrition of prison inmates. So we have a certain psychological view of people who are in these conditions.

But for me, I have an experience with this because of the environment that I come from. Many of my friends and family end up in that situation. I could have been in that situation. In the 1680s, a feisty opera singer burned down a nunnery and stole away with her secret lover. In 1810, a pirate queen negotiated her cruise way to total freedom with all their loot. During World War II, a flirtatious gambling double agent helped keep D-Day a secret from

the Germans. What are these stories having common? They're all about real women who were left out of your history books. If you're tired of missing out, check out the Womanica podcast, a daily women's history podcast highlighting women you may not have heard of, but definitely should know about. I'm your host, Jenny Kaplan, and for me, diving into these stories is the best part of my day. I learned something new about women from around the world and leave feeling amazed, inspired,

and sometimes shocked. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities, like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident?

Or, can we create new senses for humans? Or, what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagleman, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life.

I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen, or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in.

It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep

into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think, oh, all these for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And so what they did was and this is a randomized placebo controlled trial gold standard. This isn't just guessing this isn't like the other thing gold standard of clinical trial.

They took a group of these prison inmates and they improved their nutrition just through getting into some omega-3 fatty acid supplements which which we've got to talk about that by the way. And then just increasing their amount of vitamins and minerals that they're consuming, right? So very Brutuminturi stuff. And then they have the placebo group, which gets nothing. This is a four and a half month study. And after compiling all the data, the test subjects, the prison inmates who received the improved nutrition had a 35% drop in behavioral offenses versus the placebo group. And most notably a 37% drop overall in violent

offenses. Their proclivity towards hurting another person dropped by 37% by increasing their nutrition. What was in that nutrition, do you know? Basic vitamins minerals, multivitamin type stuff, omega-3s, but the omega-3s are critical. That's why I want to specifically talk about this. But that sounds so crazy because the very best programs in prison for rehabilitation come nowhere near those types of results. So some other researchers saw it and they were just like, that's an impossible. And they replicated the study and almost got the exact same numbers. This was published in the journal Aggressive Behavior. There's so many journals that cover

these things and the data is available. By getting people healthier, by giving them the basic, the question should be, how, just your cells, your brain cells specifically being able to talk to each other, you require key nutrients. And so one of those nutrients is omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA, specifically. Yeah, I want to hear about this. Yeah. The cool thing is that blood brain barrier, they got to express pests. So they're able to cross the blood brain barrier because it's one of those essentials for the brain. Now, this is so crazy. But without these specific omega-3s, your brain cells can't really efficiently talk to each other.

It's something called, they enable something called signal transduction. So your cells being able to talk, and also they're a part of all of your cell membranes. So just the cell being sustainable itself. If you're deficient in these things again, your body will try to do what it has to do, but it just degrades the way that your body works so much. And so, I studied this was published in the journal Neurology, one of the top journals looking at the brain. And they found that test subjects who consumed less than two grams of omega-3s per day had

the highest rate of brain shrinkage. Yeah. And where are we getting omega-3s from naturally if we're even getting those? Yeah, this is so important because for years, I made this mistake, all right. Working in a clinical practice, seeing people every day and wanting to invoke more plants

into people's diets, I would tell people, make sure you're getting your chia seeds and you're, you know, your flax seeds, you got flax seeds, or flax seed oil, and the refrigerated section because it's volatile, but I was missing the mark. Because that's ALA, it's a different form of omega-3, it's the plant version, and it's not what your brain uses. All right, so your brain uses EPA and DHA, these are only found in animal foods, and we do have an option for people doing a vegan protocol, which is algae oil.

All right, so we'll come back to that in just a second. But this is very important because your body can take the plant omega-3 ALA and convert it into DHA and EPA, but you're going to lose at least 75% of the conversion process. All right, so this is going to depend on your microbiome, your other metabolic factors, on whose efficient in converting this. So to say for somebody that is doing a vegan or vegetarian protocol to just have chia seeds or cool, it's not, it's not cool. Literally, we're talking about your brain shrinking. This is not a joke. You need to make sure you get in this DHA and EPA.

The whole food versions are sources that we've evolved having is going to be coming from fatty fish. Again, humans have been eating these foods for thousands of years. I don't want to get into religiosity about nutrition, where it creates all this divisiveness. I just want to talk about principles, right? And so fatty fish, grass fed beef, eggs, and then we've got, as far as what most of the peer-viewed studies are done on is done on fish oil, right? And it's just, it is what it is. Now with that said, I believe that there are some other means for this. One of them, depending on where your ethics lie, could be krill oil, right?

So krill oil is one of the richest sources of astazenthan, which is protective of those omega-3s, which is huge in of itself. But this is a microscopic, keyword microscopic shrimp. All right, you're probably just even like if you lick the air, you're going to be killing more sentient beings than, you know, the main this microscopic shrimp. But it's a concentrated form of omega mega threes DHA and EPA. If that's where you sit, then we have algae oil, which is a plant source. The caveat here is that we don't have much peer-reviewed data on its efficacy.

We know the DHA and EPA is there, so I don't want everybody to wait. If you're doing a vegan protocol, please get yourself an algae oil today, like today. Get a specific one. What do you eat that with? So algae oil today, like today. Get a specific. What do you need that with? So algae oil is going to be capsulated. Oh, capsulated, yeah. So which again, I would love people to do food first, but in this situation, it's essential.

It is absolutely essential. So we can still do our chia and our flags and our hemp seeds. Those are great for other things, but please don't mistake the fact that we need a mega-threes for cognitive function. And again, in this clinical trial, they're using fish oil. So this is not a joke. Being able to reduce your proclivity towards violence, to improve your ability to perspective take, and to be able to have more compassion and patience.

We know this when we're nutrient deprived, when we're even just hungry, we tend to be more irritable and less patient towards people we love, let alone people we don't know. So the biggest issue I believe, Jay, and this isn't because I'm a nutritionist, like I really examine this, like I sat with this for a while, I was like, is this because my life has just been revolved around health? Like truly, I feel that the biggest underlying issue for our epidemic levels of divisiveness and very illogical behavior, and the ability to see another human being and to want to do them harm is because we are unhealthy.

And the data indicates this, but my real, my life indicates this. You know, like I indicates this but my real my life indicates this You know like I grew up in an environment Man like it was just is an environment so volatile is so much violence You know outside my door and in my own household and To see how I've changed because I was a reflection of that environment to see how I've changed because I was a reflection of that environment. Something I didn't tell you about when I went to that private university. I got kicked out of that university for fighting.

Wow. I got kicked out of high school for my entire junior year for fighting. Wow. And I was in student advisory. I was a teenage health consultant, which was this little health program. I was in inroads, which was, I was able to take college credit. You know, it was the first year that it was popping off with St. Louis University. I was a scholar athlete. I was all these things. It didn't matter.

You know, I got in this situation where I felt threatened and I resorted to that behavior, you know, and every day in the morning, you know, going to get in the cereal and getting the, you know, the pasteurized orange juice, I mean, the pizza pretty much every day of lunch with the oppressor with cheese, you know, and just like, I'm making my body out of this really low quality material, right? And so the crazy thing was, once I got physically healthier, I started to see people differently. And I started to have so much more patience because I was replicating those behaviors,

like, you know, my daughter is my oldest, I have three kids. And my mother, like, she would say something once and then five seconds later, she's pissed off, right? She doesn't want to repeat herself. She's just ready on fire to be mad, to be irritated, to be aggressive towards you and to have such a lack of patience. And so I was being that with my daughter, you know, what for me, I wanted her to be, of course, most people went there to children to be better than them. And so when

she was in kindergarten, I was getting her like second and third grade work and we would sit around the table and all this stuff and just imagine like the lack of patience that I had is you and she graduated with honors all that stuff but you know just what she had to deal with and I'm even then of still it wasn't like bad but still just like the level of patience that I have now from my like my youngest son is 10 it's night and day it is night and day because I'm physically healthier. And it's not a struggle. It's not a reach for me. Now here's the rub.

It's not that we can't express compassion or the perspective take or express patience when we're unhealthy. It's just harder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think we've all experienced that, right? Like I think we all know that. That when you're hungry, you react differently to everything.

And I think we've all experienced the irritability when you feel like your body's like exhausted or malnutrition, you're going to be more irritable, you're gonna be more agitated. I think we know that. Most people would say, yeah, I know exactly what that feels like. And this is why I like the connection you're making.

And I agree with you. Even more is I've spent so long with people when they keep trying to solve the issue in their head, they're wondering why their energy is not right. They're wondering why they don't feel positive. They're wondering why they don't feel clear. And so much of it is diet related. There's, of course, there's meditation and there's mindfulness and there's beautiful practices.

But if you're doing all of those, but you're not solving your gut, you're making life harder, like you're working harder without using all the resources. And that's where at the beginning, when you said, it's your diet, your sleep, and your movement, and then you have your mindset and your meditation and your mind for us, we've got to use all four. Like you can't just use one,

like you can't just work out and say, oh it doesn't matter what I eat. And you can't just eat right and say, oh it doesn't matter if I don't work out. And you can't just sleep right. And you've right, it's not about choosing either raw, it's all of them. And that's what you present in this book about the connection between them. Yeah. Sean, you're such a wise insightful 20 years studied. I mean, when you mention them, like I can tell, it's phenomenal.

And you can tell about a passion you have for this. If someone's listening today and you could simplify for them three things that they should try and learn more about and three things they should be very aware of that they may need to put aside. What would you say for each of those? For someone who's today going, wow, I need to read this book, eat smarter. So I'm going to order that, but it's like, what are three things that I need to add and think about and research and learn more about? And what are three things that I maybe need to avoid and set aside? You know, this is a tenet throughout history.

The number one thing for me is to know that I self. You know, really do a self assessment because oftentimes, you know, working as somebody who's, I'm sitting across the table from a person and they've got 12 medications that they're on and they're wanting to make a change. And I have to be there and to look them in the eyes and say, I got you, we're gonna figure this out. And I actually know with every five or my being

that we're going to figure it out, to be able to do that, I have to evoke within that person and find what is a leverage point and help them to get honest about what landed them in this place that they're in to begin with. Right. So what I would find is that, and this is a great secret for all the coaches out there. Many people already probably know this. We're doing this type of work. If you allow a person to speak, just ask them questions. They will often tell you the cause

and the cure of what is ailing them. They're being, they know it already. It's already within their mental and cellular records. They know better than anybody, right? But you have to give people space to be able to speak. And so, but oftentimes, coaches, you know, we want to help people. And so we just want to give them our thing, right? But just actually be there.

Listen, be a space for this person. It's probably nobody's ever really listened to them. Like just actually shut everything down and listen to them. Be that person and they'll tell you the causing cure. So know thyself is the tenant, self-assess. And there's different personality types that we can put people in, but we're infinite. You know, we really are.

But there are people who tend to be, people start things and stop things very quickly. You right, they meet a little bit of resistance in there, that's okay. Then there are people who, you know, swing for the fences, they go and they do so much, like they go, they get all the things, they get all the equipment, they go so hard and they run themselves into the ground, right? And there are people who are just more balanced, like there's different personality types. And so really honing in on what your personality type is.

Yeah. And I talk about this a little bit in the book as well. So know that itself. So you know what to shore up. And I don't like to talk in terms of strengths and weaknesses. You know, you have strengths and then you often have things that are foreign to you. Right. And that's okay because like my strength is, I know a lot about the human body. I don't know about cars.

You know what I mean? Like I know Dan and Patrick, like I feel disrespected even saying car around. You know what I'm saying? And so it's just like being able to understand like that's not my domain of excellence or but I could learn. I might, you know, because of my experience come into the car game and like I can start seeing stuff other people aren't seeing, you know, like, but that's not for me. So I understand my strengths and also where I don't have any credibility or experience, right? Number one is just a principle to know yourself

and to know what things tend to hinder you. And I'll just share one little quick one because I saw it as a big consistent in my clinical practice. One of the biggest things that hinders people and getting the progress that they want is blaming others. All right, I was literally,

I was right there listening to them. And I'm like, I can see after a while, I can see it coming out here, it comes. Yeah. You know, if my kids would just stab it in us, right? If my. You know, if my kids would just have been in this. Right? If my husband would just, if my wife would just,

if my mom would just, you know, like everybody else in their life is making it harder. Right? So they have this story and they're gonna live and die by it. Right? And so, but the thing is, it's just a story. And it doesn't mean that it's not true. It doesn't mean that you don't experience more conflict

or curveballs in your life because of your life experience. But listen, it's all about perspective. I've been through some crazy stuff in my life. And to be here where I am, like the number one thing, besides that moment of decision, is taking responsibility for my life. 100% responsibility. Again, this is one of those things that you might, you don't really do that.

And so that's without any wiggle room. I had to stop pointing the fingers. I had to stop blaming and catch myself whenever I do it and understand even in a relationship conflict it's not 50 50 it's 100 to 100 because if there's a miscommunication taking place instead of me being like why don't you understand this I can think about how am I communicating this because there is a way to get through right but that's me taking responsibility but sometimes we don't feel like it you know something but also again if you're physically unwell, it's harder, right? So being able to help people with that piece of like, you've got to take responsibility here, stop blaming other people there as a way, right? And what we do

is, and this is where I can answer more the question is start stacking conditions in your favor to make it easier, make it automatic. So the biggest issue today with people being able to go from where they are with their health, where we are a severely sick society, I mentioned 250 million Americans over weight or obese, 130 million Americans, diabetic or pre-diabetic, 60% of Americans have some degree of heart disease right now.

115 million Americans are regularly sleep deprived, upwards of 50 million Americans experienced an autoimmune condition. I can go on and on and on. These are things that have never happened before, but they've skyrocketed. Depression, all time high, ADHD, the list goes on and on. Everything is worse. And here we are. Again, on paper, we're supposed to be more evolved and intelligent than we've ever

been. And people were like, well, we're living longer though. No, no, we're the first generation and recorded human history that is not going to outlive the generation before us. It is now reversed, which doesn't make sense. It should be continuing to increase. But we've hit a threshold. Our quality of life is suffering

because by treating symptoms, we can keep people alive. And what's happening is we're not really living longer, we're dying longer. We're extending the suffering. So how do we get into this state and the solution here? The number one thing is we live in a severely sick culture. And so we're automatically going to pick up what's happening in our environment. To be healthy in a severely sick society is weird. You know, so Jay, you and your wife are weird as hell.

Like you guys are super weird and shout out to everybody else that's that you're weird. You know, and that's okay. It's abnormal because normal right now is being unwell. And so a solution here is, and this is my goal. And it's what I do. This is what I dedicate my life to is what gets me in the morning, is to help to make a shift to where health is normalized, right? To where it's easy to have access to the things that make you healthy, right?

Now we have ease of access to things that make you sick, that degrade your health, that degrade your mental health. These are all close, closely accessible, right? And so one of those things, you know, again, being from Ferguson, Missouri, I was surrounded by fast food, like absolutely. You name the place within a mile radius, all of them are just up surrounded by it. And the question is, why is this so cheap? some surrounded by it. And the question is, why is this so cheap? Right? Because that's why I bought it. Yeah. The accessibility, the price and the taste, of course, they got food scientists, brilliant at making you addicted to the foods, but the cost, the economy, the

economies of scale here. And so how is it that I can go to McDonald's and get three cheeseburgers for the same amount that would cost me about one avocado? This avocado falls off the tree, like literally. These cheeseburgers are so cost-intensive to make it, makes no sense. The bread and the processing, the meat, the cheese, the condiments. Now to mention even if we use avocado versus a happy meal, there's even a toy, the packaging, right? All of these things are so proud and intensive.

Right, the market, all of that. There's, we don't have like Beyonce doing a thing for you know, avocados, like if you could imagine that, you know. But, you know what I'm saying? It's a really good point. But here's the thing. It's a really good point. If you think about this, like how is this possible and I answer this question

Because I had to like I not only did I answer the question, but I looked at what is the outcome? So a big driver of this is government subsidies Right, so from the year 1995 to 2010 alone, the United States government doled out almost $200 million in government subsidies to farmers who are growing these commodity crops that largely show up through the draft or window and in processed foods. So corn, soy, various forms of where we can extract some sugar. Wheat, of course, is big.

And by the way, if you look at the grocery store, most of the foods are made of those ingredients, right? Some forms or versions of those things. So what happened was by giving this investment, almost nothing went to the farmers who were growing fruits and vegetables. Now here's the bottom line. I came across a study and I dug. I had to find what is the outcome from this. There's got to be somebody asking this question because I'm asking it. And I found it in the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most prestigious journals in the world. And they looked at the consumption of government subsidized food and the outcomes of health and humans. Right. So the people who are consuming the most government subsidized foods had almost a 40% greater incidence of being obese.

They had a far higher waist circumference, so belly fat and high levels of blood sugar and also degradation to their inflammation. So measures, they used C-reactive protein to measure they had higher rates of inflammation, right? So all of these terrible things, but key thing almost a 40% greater incidence of being obese By consuming the food that our government is literally paying for to put into our society We're literally feeding the problem and it's not okay and When I say the government, I mean us because that money is coming from us But we don't understand our authority. We've outsourced it to other people who don't have our best interests at heart.

And so I'm in an environment where 60% greater incidents of my aunts, you know, my family members, black women, 60% greater incidents of being obese than a Caucasian woman. That's the society that we're living in and it's the environment. Right? It's not that any of us are just by nature more likely to be unhealthy. Right? And so we can help to stack conditions to unify each other, you know, unify our communities, but we got to stand up for each other and not allow this insanity to happen because

what's happening when we're feeding this problem is the higher rates of mental issues of poverty is driving more crime is driving more divisiveness, right? It's not our fault. I didn't want to be a a quote bad person. I'm in an environment where it is a bigger risk for me to go outside and play than for another kid because I literally die, a bullet might hit me. You know, and that's, again, it's not like this is a daily thing, but that stuff did happen, you know, and people don't understand that.

So you look at people and they're like, just work harder. My mother worked overnight at a convenience store, just to try again, try to make ends meet. She was stabbed eight times by somebody trying to rob a convenience store. These are things people often try again, try to make ends meet. She was stabbed eight times by somebody trying to rob the convenience store. These are things people often again, they're not subjected to. And she, my mother's a really tough human being.

Like, it's crazy, you know, if you hear somebody's stories about my mom. But when she, she subdued the guy, the police came, right? She's just, man, she's kind of a badass. But when she survived, I didn't subdue that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So when she got to the hospital and got the stitches, the physician told her that if you weren't overweight,

you would have died. Your body fat saved you. What do you think she's gonna do that cognitive association? My fat is my savior is protecting me You think she's gonna do anything to lose this weight? She's she's gonna be more acclimated to having more of it. It's my protection. It's my safety Right she sold her blood to put food on the table, you know all these different things, you know So but it's a perpetual it's's the environment, it's the culture.

And there is a way to transition out of that. But I'm, I'm really the exception, not the rule. Like, it took so many minor miracles for this to happen. But I look back at my life, it's just like, is there something remarkable about me? Like, how did all of this happen? And the, the thing is, we're all remarkable. I just realized that I have some power. I realized that I have the ability to decide, to think what I want to think, and to respond

the way that I want to respond, and to make choices in the world. When I had just been outsourcing all of my choices to the environment around me. And I had this story about like, I can't do it. So, you know, to drive that point home, a big solution here is for us to create conditions. And we can do that. We can start with our own culture and our own household. If people see my son, for example, my son, Jordan, 21 years old, right now, he just lost a new fitness program yesterday. And, you know,

I never told him to work in this field, but he's just in the environment, right? And so he's been personal training and serving. I get messages from people who their kids have bought his program, like in tears, just like your son helped my, I didn't sign up for that. I had no idea, but it's we created a culture of fitness, of health, of connection intentionally. And it doesn't matter where you start because my son Jordan was there with me, a Ferguson sleeping on an air mattress. He knows what it's like. He was there with me in Ferguson sleeping on an air mattress. He knows what it's like.

He was there with me through all of it. And so he has that perspective. No matter where you are right now, no matter where your kids are at, we can create conditions. And nobody said it was gonna be easy though. You know, there's gonna be resistance, especially if you've been just on the iPad all the time

or watching TV all the time, but a solution is, this is to add to a solution. We need to fill that space with something of greater or equal value. That's the trick, right? So if you can find a way to supplant the need to, you know, for them to watch another show with something that is, you know, involves movement,

you know, maybe again, like, and you can recruit other people. You've probably got friends and your network, you know, like, maybe there's a dance class or maybe there's, you know, feeling blank, you would like, the greatest gift that I have in my life today is the resources and the people that I have, right? And I'm a self-professed lone wolf for sure, like, I definitely have that long wolf energy. But now, like, every day in my meditation practice, I have a little segment where I do a gratitude and I run through all the, you know, people I'm grateful for. And it's just like, it blows my mind.

Oftentimes, I, I, you know, I go into tears, you know, thinking about it, all the wonderful people. But that, even that happens by you becoming the type of person that can invite in that kind of energy, right? And so, one of the big tricks that I've learned over the years too, for people who are wanting, you know, blaming other people and wanting them to change, is very difficult. There's a statement that you can't be a prophet in your own land. Yeah. Invite and find other voices to do the thing.

So, I just came back on Sunday from speaking at an event in Mexico. Every year, it's called phenomenal life and it's Eric Thomas. Often, consider like top motivational speaker in the world. So, it's him, myself, C.J., the Scott named Jamal, who's just a brilliant guy as well. So we do this event. I'm not just gonna go to the event, I'm gonna bring my family. So they can hear from them, rather than from me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So that's one of the things I realized. It's just like, if I have the opportunity, let me get the kids in this place. Even with fitness, what tends to happen is, if somebody's working

on their fitness, they leave their kids, they never really see them. Like mom goes to this mystical place called the gym and she comes back happier and sweaty. Like even that is kind of freaky actually to be like, where are you going mom? But anyways, give your kids some of these inputs, like let them see you workout, invite them in, do some stuff with them, right? As soon as my oldest son was old enough to go to golds back in St. Louis, he was 12 years old, and he let 12 year olds in, he brought into the gym with me.

And now like this, he's a beast, like it's crazy, you know? He just, yeah, so start with your own household, create a culture intentionally. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just yeah, so start with your own household, create a culture intentionally. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's just about progress. You know, I know you asked for three things, but there's so much there. Beautiful, man. Sure, you could drop the mic. That was so beautiful on so many levels because what I really appreciate about you is you're able to put the emphasis on taking responsibility and designing your own destiny in and amongst all of the chaos, all of the divisiveness, all of the pain and challenges that you've experienced personally that you see around you.

And you're saying, well, I've taken my own learning into my own hands. And I think that's empowering. I think it's encouraging. And I think it's enlivening. Everyone who's been listening and watching because we can hear your heart. And I love today how you've connected the gut, to the heart, to the brain,

you know, to see that 360 degree approach to life through your truth is truly powerful to experience, to just sit in the presence of that. And that just like flies off of you, like it just exudes from who you are, your eyes, your face, your body, your mind, your whole entire presence. Like I've just been feeling it. So I want you to know that I see that, I feel that. And I want everyone who's listening and watching, if you haven't been able to see it, because you're not in the room, I'm

sure you can hear it. And I want everyone to go, you know, subscribe to Sean Show, grab the book, eat smart, follow Sean on social media, because he's talking about the gut, but it's a way through to the heart and the soul as well. So, Sean, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us as a guest on our purpose, for putting your heart into this book and the work that you continue to do. And I know this will be the first of many more conversations. Thank you, James. It's been honor. Thank you, man. I received that. Thank you so much. I want to make sure Thank you, man. I received that. Thank you so much.

I want to make sure everyone has been listening and watching. What I'd love for you to do is tag me and Sean to let us know what you learned, what you took away. There were so many phenomenal insights today on so many different levels, right? Whether it's mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, family, societal, economical. Like we've really went everywhere. And what we discovered ultimately, as Sean said, was we've got to take charge.

We can't outsource our happiness, we can't outsource our health. We've got to take that charge just as he has, just as he continues to try to do and serve and support us as well. So I can't wait to see what you've learned. I can't wait to see your feedback. Big thank you to Sean again and a big thank you to each and every one of you that are investing in your health and happiness as you listen to on purpose.

Thanks everyone. Thank you Sean. The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again. So I followed her into the train yard.

This is what it sounds like inside the box-car. And into the city of the rails. There I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful, that it changed me. But the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there, and if you want to play with the devil, you're going to find them there in the rail yard. Undenail Morton, come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or cityoftherails.com.

What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War II, an opera singer who burned down an honorary to kidnap her lover, and a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils haven't comment. They're all real women who were left out of your history books. You can hear these stories and more on the Womanica podcast. Check it out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. a podcast. Check it out on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen.