Something You Should Know - How the House You Live In Affects Who You Are & The Scientific Way To Lose Weight for the New Year

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

When you feel and ache or pain in your body, you likely reach for a Tylenol. And it turns out that you should also reach for one when you are feeling emotional pain as well; such as loneliness or distress. Why? I begin this episode with that explanation. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091222154742.htm No matter how clean you think your home is, you are sharing your house with millions of creatures – both visible and invisible. From the tiniest germs to your dog or cat – all of these creatures have an impact on you. In fact, if you own a cat, there is an excellent chance of getting infected with a parasite that will change your behavior! I know it sounds crazy but you have got to hear this. Rob Dunn, biologist and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University joins me to discuss the fascinating world inside your home you never knew was there. Rob is author of the book Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live (https://amzn.to/2VE0j5K) One of the big pitfalls of writing texts or emails is that people can misinterpret your intent – particularly if you are being sarcastic. But I have a solution that will make sure people will understand what you are really trying to say in your written communication. http://mentalfloss.com/article/73392/winky-faces-make-your-texts-sarcastic-scientists-say Do you know what your set point weight is? Anyone who has tried to lose weight knows there is a point where you get stuck and it is really hard to drop more weight. Jonathan Bailor, author of the bestselling book The Calorie Myth has researched this for his new book The Setpoint Diet (https://amzn.to/2SK4V8r). He joins me to explain why people get stuck on their set point weight and how to outsmart your body so you can lose more weight.   This Week's Sponsors -Capterra. To find the right software for your business visit www.capterra.com/something -ADT. Go to www.ADT.com/smart to learn how ADT can design and install a smart home system for you. -Geico. Go to www.Geico.com to see how Geico can save you money on your car insurance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, Tylenol is good for pain, and that includes emotional pain. I'll explain why and how that works. Plus, there's a very common household pet that can infect you with a parasite. And if you've been infected, your personality profile changes, your risk of car accidents goes up. The kicker is that this parasite is super common. And so 60 to 70% of French people have been infected. Plus, a clever way to make sure

someone does not misinterpret your text or email. And how do you keep losing weight when you get stuck at your set point weight? The answer is to change that set point by reducing inflammation in your brain, balancing your hormones, and that's done by focusing on the quality of what you eat, how you move, and how you think, rather than the quantity of calories consumed. All this today on Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks.

Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit,

the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something You should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts.

And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. What if I told you that owning a cat can change your behavior? I know, doesn't that sound just the weirdest thing ever? But if you own a cat or you're thinking about getting a cat, you've got to listen to the first interview in this episode of the podcast. I had never heard this before, but owning a cat can chemically change something in your brain that alters your behavior.

And you're going to have to listen to find out how. First up today, Tylenol works great on aches and pains, but did you know that Tylenol can also help with hurt feelings as well? It's true, according to research at the University of Florida. They tested acetaminophen, which is the active ingredient in Tylenol, against a placebo on people suffering loneliness, emotional distress, or hurt feelings. They took 500 milligrams in the morning and 500 again at night. And those who took the Tylenol felt much more upbeat than the people who took the placebo. The researchers say that's because acetaminophen can reduce activities in regions of the brain that govern our emotions, and that is something you should know.

Inside your home is a world of living creatures, many of which are invisible. But these creatures, they are your roommates, and they have a real impact on you. They're very different than the creatures that live in the outdoor environment. And since today we spend a lot more time indoors than our ancestors did, it's important to understand this fascinating environment that is your home, what these creatures are that are living there, and what effect they have on you. Rob Dunn is a biologist and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences

at North Carolina State University, and he's author of several books. His latest is Never Home Alone, From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets and Honeybees, The Natural History of Where We Live. And he's here to tell you about all of this. Hi, Rob. Thanks for being here. Oh, it's great to be on the show. So you talk about the fact that we're not alone in our homes, that we are surrounded by visible and invisible creatures. But explain the scope of that.

Explain how big a deal this is and why it's important to discuss. Well, so if you imagine the breath that you just inhaled or that the listeners just inhaled, that individual breath has about a thousand species in it. And of those thousand species, you know, maybe one or two could do you harm, probably not even that many. A few you absolutely depend on for your well-being. And most of them that we know absolutely nothing about. And so because we now spend 23, 23 and a half hours of the day indoors, most of those species we're inhaling, that we're sitting on, that we're ingesting, those are indoor species.

And so we're now in a situation where the biodiversity to which we're most exposed is this indoor stuff, this sort of wilderness of the daily life. And so it's an intriguing moment in our history in which we're exposed to this wildness that we don't know so much about. And so what are the potential consequences? And how do we know that's a bad thing? Well, so one of the consequences is that we now know that to have an immune system that functions in a normal, healthy way, that our immune systems need to be exposed to a diversity of kinds of microbes. And we're now seeing a whole suite of allergy and asthma and other chronic inflammatory diseases associated with the failure of kids to be exposed

to those microbes. And so that's one of the consequences, that we're no longer getting the things in our environment we used to have, and as a result, we're starting to get sick in new ways. The other is that if you think about it, when you look at those hand sanitizers or other products you might use to clean your homes, what they typically say is that they kill 99% of germs, and pesticides are the same sort of thing. It kills 99% of ants and other bugs say the same sort of thing. Kills 99%

of ants and other bugs. What that leaves us with is the 1%, which tends to be the nastiest possible stuff. And so on the one hand, we're no longer being exposed to the species that we need for our immune systems to work right. On the other hand, the stuff that we're surrounding ourselves with tends to be species that will actually do us harm. And so resistant bacteria, resistant cockroaches, resistant bedbugs. And so we seem to have made some of the exact wrong choices in how we design our homes and how we live in them. And so what are we supposed to do about this? I mean, we are where we are. It depends where you live, but a lot of the things that we can do are actually pretty

simple. So if you open your windows, you let a lot of these outdoor species into your house, a lot of these species that are pretty beneficial. If you plant more kinds of plants in your backyard and then you let your windows open, you're exposed to more of these beneficial sorts of microbes. And so something like opening your windows is really very simple and can be very helpful. And in fact, there was a recent study of a hospital in which scientists compared the bacteria species in rooms that had their windows open and rooms that had the very best cleaning system that money can buy. And there were fewer pathogens in the rooms that had their windows open than in the rooms that were using the very best air filtration system. And so some of the solutions are really

simple like that. Other solutions are more like moderation. You know, use soap and water, wash your hands the way we've always been taught you should, get vaccinated. But don't go around scrubbing all the surfaces in your home with antimicrobial products. And so a lot of the solution is about moderation, about, you know, just stepping back a little bit off the pedal in terms of how much biocide we're using and how much we're trying to kill the life around us. Part of living in a civilized Western society is that we want to live in a clean environment. We want our homes to be clean. We want to, you know, that's why we call the pest guy when we get bugs in the house or we get rodents in the house. We want our homes to be clean, but maybe they're not

as clean as we think they are. Yeah, so we did a study a few years ago where we went out into 50 homes in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I spent part of the year, and we went into those houses to try to find all of the kinds of insects in their relatives in those houses that were there. And when we talked to our colleagues about what we would find in houses, you know, there's a whole...

Universities are a funny thing, and the whole building next to my building is just filled with people whose job it is to figure out how better to kill insects in your house. And so when I talked to those folks, they were sure that all we were going to find would be German roaches and bed bugs and some head lice. And that it was, you know, it was super obvious and the most boring thing ever. But what we instead found was in those first 50 homes, almost 2,000 kinds of insects and their relatives in those houses. And it totally didn't matter if people were using pesticides. Their houses were just as diverse in terms of which species that were in there.

And that included all kinds of crazy stuff. Like one of my favorites is there's a larval insect that its entire lifestyle is it lives with termites and then farts on the termites. And that stuns the termites and then this larvae eats the termites. And we found that in the house. We found the world's smallest cricket in a bunch of houses. Most houses had four to 10 species of spiders. Well, there's certainly a bit of a eww factor there. I like to think that, you know, my house is clean, but apparently clean doesn't necessarily mean

and can't possibly mean that you get rid of everything. You know, we've swabbed thousands of houses and we've never found a single surface in a house that didn't have bacteria or fungi or insects or something else on it. And so that's the first point, that you're going to have life with you, and we need that

life. And so get used to it. Embrace it. But then given that we're going to have life with us, how do we think about which of these species we most want with us? And so it turns out that spiders actually play a really valuable role in houses and are very, very, very, very unlikely to actually bite people. And so if you have spiders in your house, leave them alone.

Let them do their good work of eating your mosquitoes and your flies. But the other thing is that we know so little about these species that by just paying attention to them, we can often make totally new discoveries of the sort that I used to imagine we'd only made in rainforests and faraway places. That, you know, big new science can happen under your bed. Really? For example, where do you live, Mike? Southern California. So we did a survey recently of people around the U.S.

And we asked people, do you have camel crickets in your house? And camel crickets are these crazy cave crickets that moved into houses early in the sort of American colonial experiment. And we've known they've been there for a long time, but nobody really studies them. And so we asked if people had them. And they're not supposed to be in California. We know based on the study of their biology for a bunch of years. And it turned out that in fact, some of these were being found in California. And so our first thought was that people had gotten it wrong, that they looked in their cellar or crawl space or in their backyard shed, and they'd seen something else and thought

it was one of these camel crickets. But it turned out that unbeknownst to scientists, this giant Japanese species of camel cricket had moved house to house across North America, and that scientists hadn't noticed. I mean, everybody knew it was in their house because it's huge and it jumps at you out of the dark. But as scientists, we all thought somebody else knew what it was. And so, you know, here's this thumb-sized thing that nobody noticed, which then really gave us the sense, well, what else are we missing in our midst every day? And we've gone on to find more and more totally new things right in houses.

I'm speaking with Rob Dunn. He is a biologist and professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University, and he's author of the book, Never Home Alone. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating

conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of red off punt wine erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator join me as i study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving god and we are not its favored children the heresies of redolf punt wine wherever podcasts are available are not its favored children. The Heresies of Redolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. So, Rob, something I've always wondered is, do we see a big movement of population of a lot of these creatures because of human travel, that certain bugs and things hide in a suitcase

and then at the other end of the trip come out and have babies and resurface there. Some do, some don't. Houseflies would be one example that they travel a lot in suitcases and on planes. And if you look at the genetics of houseflies, they move so often that the closest relative of the house fly in your house might be a house fly in Mexico, you know, that they're spreading their genes over really big areas. And this has been happening for a long time. A lot of the species that we find in California or Raleigh are actually originally native to Syria and Iraq. And they moved into houses when some of the very first houses were being built and traveled with us not on planes but on boats.

And so some of this movement has been going on for a long time. Mike, you've got face mites on your head. Those travel with us wherever we go. And then there are other things that seem more restricted. Like there's a spider that's common in houses in eastern north america called the spitting spider and it spits a ball of silk on its prey venomous silk and that seems not to have made it everywhere it's interesting when you talk about spiders and you said that you know most spiders in your house will do you no harm and

are probably beneficial to have in there. And yet people, a lot of people just can't stand spiders. And even people who put spiders outside, you know, like, and I've done this, you don't want to kill the spider, so you put it outside. on this podcast who said that's probably a death sentence because most spiders that are in your house have never been outside your house and have no idea how to survive outside and putting them outside is doom yeah i mean it's like dropping a new york city kid off in the middle of yellowstone with no advice it's a lot most of your house spiders can't do very well outdoors. Well, there also seems to be this, you know, there's always this sense of, you know, the bigger the creature, the more you want to get rid of it. I mean,

a house might not be so bad. A rat, well, you know, I can see that, and that's kind of gross. That's also modulated by culture. You know, so we've decided that dogs are like an okay thing to welcome in, cats are an okay thing to welcome in, and different cultures let different species in. You know, it's not uncommon to be in a house in the Amazon and for a baby pig to be part of the household community and inside the house. In the Andes, it's, you know, guinea pigs run around the house pretty often.

And so part of what seems obvious is maybe not so obvious in a broader perspective. Yeah, that's interesting, because you're right. I mean, some people would think, God, well, even some people in our own culture would never have a dog because dogs are dirty and they shed and they, you know, it's kind of gross, but other people love dogs and have 10 of them. So, you know, who's to say? Yeah. And we do know from the studies we've done on dogs and cats, that when you have a dog or a cat, that actually has all kinds of consequences for which species are in your house. And so dogs bring in a bunch of unusual microbes on their feet and their drool and their fur. Cats bring in a pretty common protist that actually can get into your brain

and alter your brain chemistry. What? Yeah, yeah. Wait a minute. Do you want to come back to that one? Yeah, we're not going to gloss over that. What? Do you have cats, Mike?

No, I don't. So there's a quite common parasite that was studied for years and years by basic biologists, and the medical practitioners never cared about it at all. And it initially gets ingested by things that eat a little bit of soil accidentally. And mice and rats are among those species. And so then it gets in the bloodstream of the mice and rats and other species. But it can only have sex in a cat. And so this is a weird thing for a parasite because how do you predictably enough get into a cat to fulfill your wishes and dreams?

And so what it does is it gets into the brains of the mice or rats, and it actually makes them more risky and less fearful or even attracted to, fearful of or even attracted to the smell of cat pee. And so it increases the odds that they get eaten by a cat and can pass on their genes. And so for years, this was this obscure thing that basic biologists thought was cool and nobody else ever cared about. And then this crazy Czech scientist, Jaroslav Fleger, started to argue that he had been infected by this parasite and it had changed his behavior.

And initially nobody listened to him. And then it turned out that, lo and behold, humans can also be infected by the same form of the parasite. And if you've been infected, your personality profile changes, your risk of car accidents goes up. The kicker is that in some countries, this parasite is super common. And so 60 to 70% of French people have been infected. And so it can explain an entire country, potentially. And all because we're letting cats indoors in some way or another. How do you know if you're infected?

I don't know. Do you feel risky? I meant, is there a test? You can get tested, but we can't do anything about it. And so if you've been infected, it's only really interesting to get the test if you just want to know for yourself. For most people, there aren't huge negative consequences apart from that whole personality changing thing. Well, apart from that, apart from being an entirely different person, you're fine. Yeah, we're always changing. But I guess the broader point would be that we think nothing of letting a cat indoors. I do now. Yeah.

But each one of these things we do, each way we change our lifestyle, has an effect on which species live with us. And we now have the tools to start to make some of those decisions consciously. And so I think it's a good moment to think about, well, which species do we want with us, given that every time we open a door or seal a window or let a cat in or don't let a cat in, it impacts what we're exposed to. Well, there's been a lot of talk in the last few years that people have said, in reference to things like asthma and allergies and who knows what else, you know, you need to let your kids get dirty and play outdoors and,

you know, play in the mud and, you know, let them eat some dirt once in a while. And it's okay. You know, you need to let your kids get dirty and play outdoors and, you know, play in the mud and, you know, let them eat some dirt once in a while. And it's okay. You don't have to be super clean. But it sounds like from what you're saying, it's a little more complicated than that. So there are a bunch of things like that that seem as though they may be beneficial and they're not detrimental. And so let your kid play in the dirt. Let your kid, you know, work in the garden, be exposed to plants, be exposed to dogs and cats. And it seems like most of the time that if it's going to have an effect, it's most likely to be a beneficial effect. So what we're doing at the moment is basically saying,

well, here's this whole wilderness of microbes. Let's hope that some of the stuff that you need is in there and we'll give it to you. And so I think in the same way, a lot of the stuff that we can do in our daily lives really relates to, we don't know exactly which of these species you need, but let's make sure we're exposed to enough of the wilderness that if the right one's out there, that your kids are getting it, that your immune system is seeing it. Well, it's so interesting that there's this whole world of germs and microbes and things you can't see, as well as things like spiders and things you can see going on right under

our noses. And, you know, we contribute to it, too. As you were pointing out, we let dogs and cats into our homes as our pets. But that thing you said about cats, I mean, I've never heard that before, that cats owning a cat will alter your personality. You know, people love their cats. I guess, yeah. are cats. Right now, it's probably fair to say that microbially, most of what we know about cats and houses is that cats seem to have these pretty crazy effects, some of which are negative. And most of what we know about dogs is that to the extent that they have effects, most of them so

far seem positive. But I'm going to get a bunch of hate mail from cat people, but that's an odd deal. You know, a lot of cat people will object to what you said, but I think it's important that people know that. I mean, if owning a cat can affect your personality like that, that's, I think, worth knowing. My guest has been Rob Dunn. He's a biologist, writer, and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University, and he's author of the book Never Home Alone,

From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets and Honeybees, The Natural History of Where We Live. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Rob. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. What a great show. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and

a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong Each week we deliver four fun-filled shows In Don't Blame Me We tackle our listeners' dilemmas With hilariously honest advice Then we have But Am I Wrong Which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice

Plus we share our hot takes on current events Then tune in to see you next Tuesday For our listener poll results From But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. If a healthier, slimmer you is in the cards for the new year, you're going to find this really interesting.

You see, every year in January, a lot of people become familiar with the term set point weight. What that is, is when you decide to lose weight and begin whatever diet and exercise system you choose and you begin losing weight, you start to see pounds drop off, maybe 5-10 pounds, and then it stops. It's a point at which it's very hard to keep dropping weight. So what's going on here? How can this be? Is there really something to the concept of a set point weight? Or is it maybe that you're losing some of your determination and willpower? Or is it something else entirely? Jonathan Baylor is someone who's really looked into this. He authored a best-selling book a while back called The Calorie Myth,

and his new book is called The Set Point Diet. He's also the founder of the weight loss and diabesity treatment company called Sane Solution, and his work has gotten a lot of attention from the medical community. Hi, Jonathan, welcome. Hey, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, so what is your setpoint? What does that mean? Is it a real thing? Explain it. It is definitely a real thing, and it's something we've all felt on some level, you know, for decades, this idea and this feeling inside where no matter how hard we try, no matter

what diet we go on, no matter what exercise routine we try, that feeling that your body just wants to be at a certain weight, that's not you imagining things. It's not you being crazy or lazy. That is a now scientifically established fact. It's called your set point weight. So is your set point because that's where you've been most of your life or is there some formula to it or what? There is something analogous to a formula. You could essentially say genetics plus brain inflammation plus hormonal balance or lack

thereof plus your gut microbiota equals your set point. And so how does that reconcile with the concept that we've all heard forever, that if you burn more calories than you take in, you should lose weight. So why would you stop losing weight if you continue to do that? You wouldn't stop at your set point in that example. In that example, you could think of it a little bit like imagine that your body temperature set point for most people, 98.6 degrees. Imagine if that was elevated because you had a fever and then you put yourself into an ice bath. So energy deprivation would cause your body temperature to drop, but it has not fixed the

underlying cause of an elevated set point. Therefore, if you ever got out of the ice bath, you would likely have an even higher fever or a higher body temperature set point. We see the same thing happen with starvation dieting. It does cause short-term weight loss. But unfortunately, it causes an elevation in your body weight set point. And that's why yo-yo dieting or more weight gain than loss happens in about 95.4% of starvation diet cases. So what's the answer? The answer is to change that set point by reducing inflammation in your brain, balancing your hormones, and changing the distribution of various microbiota in your gut. And that's done by focusing on the quality of what you eat, how you move, and how you think, rather than the quantity of calories

consumed. And so when you say the quality of the food you eat, I assume that means, you know, more natural foods, less junk food, less sugar, that kind of thing? It's along those lines, but I want to be very careful here because quality can mean any number of things to any number of people. To some people, it could mean I bought it at Whole Foods. To some people, it could mean it's organic. What we mean when we say high quality or something very specific for scientifically proven factors of satiety or how filling the calorie is, aggression, its hormonal impact, nutrition, how many essential nutrients it provides, and efficiency or how readily your body can store it as fat. Satisfying, unaggressive, nutritious, and inefficient calories are high-quality calories. And they come from plants and animals, and they're also very affordable, and there are some that are very expensive. But it's not about organic or those types of characteristics. But isn't a lot of it about not just what you eat, but what you don't

eat? That is a big part of it. But what we found is that when you tell a human being what not to do, that only increases the likelihood of doing it. It's a little bit like the don't think of a white bear experiment, which some of your listeners may be familiar with. So we have found that telling people to focus on eating these foods, non-starchy vegetables, nutrient-dense protein, whole food fats, and low fructose fruits, you will crowd out those insane set point elevating foods. And yet people have a great deal of trouble with this. I mean, you've laid out the recipe and if people would just follow the recipe, they'll lose weight. Well, but the problem is, it isn't that easy, because following the recipe is hard. It is simple, but it is not easy, and there is a big difference between those two things,

especially when the vast majority of the population spent 40-plus years of their lives being told that if they would just stop being lazy and eat less and exercise more, both of which actually elevate your set point, it can become very challenging. So it is simple. It is. The scientific consensus is that this is simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Well, wait, how can eating less and exercising more increase your weight? Starvation is not healthy. And we all know that eating less is a euphemism for starving yourself. Exercising more is just the other side of that coin.

Whether or not you consume 600 fewer calories per day or jog off 600 fewer calories per day. Your body is in an energy deprived state. What would be much healthier is not to rob the body of energy, but to heal the body and then allow it to balance energy appropriately. Well, when I think of reducing calories, I don't think of starvation as much as I think of, well, maybe you cut out desserts or or maybe you don't have that second helping, as opposed to, you know, eating water cress and a glass of water. I think that a lot of people may feel that way. Unfortunately, the individuals who suffer most are usually the individuals who are being told, go on 1200 calorie diets, which is a

starvation diet. Actually, the last starvation diet that was allowed in the medical community was during the World War II timeframe. And the starvation conditions that they put participants under to approximate war-torn Europe was was 1,600 calorie per day diets. And that resulted in a 40% drop in metabolism and a 72% increase in depression. And that's a 1,600 calorie diet, which is generous, according to most starvation dieting programs today. Well, you mentioned the brain as well as an element of this equation. And explain that. How does that fit into this?

We have been essentially programmed to believe that our bodies and brains are stupid and that unless we consciously count calories, our bodies and brains want to be overweight or obese or diabetic. And that is simply false. Your brain has mechanisms in place, your ventromedial hypothalamus, your lateral hypothalamus that are designed to count calories for you. But when those areas become inflamed through the wrong quality of nutrition, not overeating, your body is unable to balance calories for you automatically. And this is not crazy talk. This is exactly how diabetes works. We all know that blood sugar should be automatically balanced by your body. But when it loses that ability due to a disease, we call that diabetes. The same thing

applies to obesity. When your brain, gut, and hormones lose the ability to automatically and healthfully balance calories in with calories out, that is a disease the American Medical Association calls obesity. Well, understanding, you know, you've got a whole book that explains how to fix this, but in a nutshell, what does this look like, you know, day to day? What does breakfast, lunch, and dinner look like? What does my day look like if I do what you're talking about? The good news is that all of us have eaten this high quality, sane way on occasion. We just need to do more of it and we need to do it consistently. So for example, for breakfast, if you've ever eaten eggs and vegetables, that is an extremely high quality set point lowering breakfast because

you're getting your non-starchy vegetables, you're getting nutritious protein, and you're getting some wonderful healthy fats from the eggs. For lunch, if you've ever had stir fry, which didn't have a lot of rice or noodles, but focused again more on protein and vegetables, that is a very sane lunch. If you've ever had a salad with salmon or chicken on top, that is a very sane lunch. If you've ever had a salad with salmon or chicken on top, that's a very sane lunch. And then in between lunch and dinner, if you've ever snacked on nuts, that's a wonderful high quality snack. And then for dinner, chances are you already eat in this high quality sane way, just not all the time. Anytime you have vegetables on your plate, as well as nutritious proteins, you're on your way to high quality eating. You just need to put so much of that

on your plate that it crowds out all the processed starches and sugars. And is it no sugar, no dessert, no sugar in your my coffee? Is it that strict or is it just less is better? It's about changing where you're getting that sweet flavor from. So telling an individual to never eat sweets for the rest of their life, I think might be something I wouldn't personally want to do, so I would never recommend. So the good news is that when you use whole food fats or nuts and seeds, you can prepare cookies, cakes, pies, things like that. You're just using nut-based flours and you're using natural non-calorically toxic sweeteners, such as Lohan Go or Erythritol or Stevia. So literally there's nothing you can't eat. You just

need to change how you make it. And then things like lasagna, you're just using eggplant sliced horizontally rather than noodles. There's literally no recipe on the planet that we cannot make high quality with some smart substitutions. healthy that aren't? I'm thinking of like maybe smoothies aren't as healthy as people think they are or any other food that they're trying, but they're just misinformed. The wrong type of smoothies are definitely set point elevating. So the smoothies that you would get from a national chain or even at your grocery store that contain more sugar than two cans of soda, in some cases, three cans of soda, are definitely elevating your set point. Other things like whole grains can cause tremendous inflammation in the brain as well as dysbiosis in the gut. And surprisingly, the wrong form of exercise, such as waking up very early in the morning, aka getting less sleep, and then doing long-duration

cardiovascular exercise can wreak havoc on your hormones and elevate your set point. So what is better? High-quality, low-duration exercise, such as very slow and safe resistance training. I've talked to several other experts on this, and one of the interesting things about exercise that I have found is that people use exercise to lose weight, but in fact, what exercise does is makes you hungrier, and that that in fact can sabotage your weight loss goals. The research I've seen is definitely consistent with half of that statement,

which is that exercise, certain forms such as cardiovascular exercise can stimulate appetite and not only stimulate appetite, but stimulate cravings for the exact type of insane set point elevating foods that we don't want to eat, such as sugar and starch. High quality, short duration, high intensity resistance training has been shown in studies to do the exact opposite, which is to help to re-regulate appetite. So I think it's important that we clarify what type of exercise we're talking about. Is this an all-in plan or can you do some of it and do okay and all of it's better, but some of it still helps or you

have to go all in? It is 100% true that the more non-starchy vegetables, the more nutrient-dense protein, the more whole food fats and the low fructose fruits that you eat in place of processed starches and sweeteners, the happier, healthier, and fitter you will be. So it is a continuum. You don't have to do everything. That said, what is unique about this book is we have developed, after working with tens of thousands of people, a 21-day protocol where if you want the fastest, most therapeutic approach to this as possible, because you've been suffering

for decades, we can provide you with that as well. So address the issue because I can imagine people listening to you saying, great, another diet, it's in conflict with other diets that say eat a lot of protein and don't eat a lot of vegetables. Why should we believe this guy? Just one quick point of clarification. Nutrient-dense protein and non-starchy vegetables will be filling up the vast majority of your plate when you're eating this way. The other thing that's really important is that this high-quality way of eating is compatible with any other quote-unquote diet out there, and really any other way of eating with the exception of the standard American diet. When you do this, do you reset your set point? Absolutely. Another way to think of it is you lower it. So to be very clear, we all have different body types. There are ectomorphs, mesomorphs, and endomorphs. There are, you know, just like some people are tall and some

people are short, our genetics do play a role here. But we can optimize our set point. We can take it to the lowest point that it can healthfully be. And then what we will find is that our body will work to burn calories for us automatically as aggressively as it is currently working to store them. And if that sounds too good to be true, I would just ask you to imagine the naturally thin people you know who eat whatever they want, don't really exercise, and stay slim. How does that work? Well, their brain, gut, and hormones are in a different state, and we can make your brain, gut, and hormones work more like theirs. You've used a couple of terms several times in our conversation here that might need some more clarification. High-density proteins, low-fructose

fruits, low-starchy vegetables. Not everybody knows what that means. So how about some examples of all of those things? Non-starchy vegetables are vegetables you could eat raw. You don't have to eat them raw, but you could. For example, potatoes and corn cannot be eaten raw. They're starches. They're not non-starchy vegetables. Next on the list are nutrient-dense proteins. These are generally humanely raised animals or wild-caught low-mercury seafood. Not always, but those are ideal, As well as low-sugar dairy

foods, such as a low-sugar and low-fat Greek yogurt or cottage cheese. And then from a whole food fat perspective, primarily nuts and seeds. And then from a low-fructose fruit perspective, berries and citrus fruit, such as strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits. What about whole grains? I mean, we've heard forever that part of a healthy diet is whole grains and, you know, people have been eating bread forever. So what about grains? Grain is unfortunately not very satiating, calorie for calorie. It is terribly aggressive, meaning it spikes hormones like insulin. It's not nutrient dense when compared with vegetables or low fructose fruits, and it is very efficiently stored as fat on your body. So using those scientific

criteria, we want to eat so many non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats, and low fructose fruits that were too full for grain. And I think that's an issue for people is they think, all these vegetables, I'm going to be hungry in an hour. The beautiful thing about this way of eating is the SANE acronym. And that first criteria that I talked about, satiety. Scientific research is clear that satiety or the feeling of fullness comes from three things. Hormonal signals in the short term, hormonal signals in the long term, and the actual space taken up by food in your gut. By eating non-starchy vegetables, nutrient-dense protein, and whole food fats, you will 100% optimize your short-term and long-term satiety hormones,

as well as filling your stomach up. And calorie for calorie, studies show that there is no more satiating and satisfying way of eating than the high-quality way we're describing here. Does it get easier as you do this? Because if you're cutting out foods that you've been eating all your life and maybe crave them, it would be nice to know that maybe those cravings will fade. One of the things, arguably the thing, that makes high-quality eating work, whereas low-quantity eating does not, is starving yourself never gets easier. It only gets harder. However, changing what you eat always gets easier over time because our tastes change according to what we eat. Some people may have experienced this when

they switched, for example, from full fat milk to skim milk or from regular soda to diet soda. I'm not endorsing either one of those foods. I'm just saying these are examples where people may have started to switch what they were eating, the quality of what they were eating, and then they noticed that eventually their tastes followed. And if they tried the thing they ate in the past, what used to be delicious has now become disgusting. And you'll find the same thing here. Well, you seem to have the science on your side. You know, we typically don't do fad weight loss diets on this program because they're fad weight loss diets.

But this seems to have a lot of science behind it. And the other thing I like is that it's a sliding scale. The more you do, the better, but you don't have to do the whole thing to see results. My guest has been Jonathan Baylor. His book is The Setpoint Diet. He's also founder of the weight loss and diabetes treatment company called Sane Solution. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Appreciate you being here. Thanks, Jonathan. Thank you so much.

We've talked before about how written communication like texts and emails can get you in trouble because the reader may not understand what's behind it, how you meant it, what the nuance of what you're trying to say is, and they may take it the wrong way. Sarcasm is a great example of that. Sarcasm is very hard to convey in writing. It's more of a spoken thing. But now there is a way to be sarcastic in writing and be pretty sure people get it.

How? Well, there is something called the winky face. A study in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology finds that this is a pretty reliable way to show your readers that you're being sarcastic. It is that emoticom of a smiley face winking with one eye. If you add that to texts and you are being sarcastic, people will get it. The researchers had people read texts and Facebook posts and found overwhelmingly that the winky emoticom made people think the comments were sarcastic and had the effect of dulling the impact of those comments,

making negative statements more positive and positive statements sound more negative. And that is something you should know. We're on social media, and I invite you to join us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and follow us there where you will get additional content above and beyond what you hear in the program. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are

going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions.

I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures. You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either.

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