Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Hidden World Inside Your Home & How to Lower Your Set Point Weight

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Starting point is 00:00:17 You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. 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

Starting point is 00:00:50 risk of car accidents goes up. The kicker is that this parasite is super common. So 60 to 70 percent 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.

Starting point is 00:01:31 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.

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Starting point is 00:02:39 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.

Starting point is 00:03:19 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

Starting point is 00:04:02 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.

Starting point is 00:04:41 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.

Starting point is 00:05:16 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

Starting point is 00:06:05 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, when you look at those

Starting point is 00:07:04 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 say the same sort of thing. It 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

Starting point is 00:07:42 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

Starting point is 00:08:25 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

Starting point is 00:08:56 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

Starting point is 00:09:42 and 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 bedbugs and some head lice. And that 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.

Starting point is 00:10:22 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

Starting point is 00:10:45 in a bunch of houses. Most houses had four to ten 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?

Starting point is 00:11:31 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. Big new science can happen under your bed.

Starting point is 00:12:05 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.

Starting point is 00:12:33 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, you know, they'd looked in their cellar or crawl space or in their backyard, you know, 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.

Starting point is 00:13:11 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. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Starting point is 00:13:59 Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

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Starting point is 00:15:16 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 housefly in your house might be a housefly 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.

Starting point is 00:16:09 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.

Starting point is 00:16:39 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. Well, I remember talking to someone 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,

Starting point is 00:17:17 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. 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

Starting point is 00:17:59 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.

Starting point is 00:18:40 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.

Starting point is 00:19:11 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.

Starting point is 00:19:39 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 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.

Starting point is 00:20:23 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.

Starting point is 00:20:40 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 percent 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?

Starting point is 00:21:08 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

Starting point is 00:21:46 think nothing of letting a cat indoors. Well, 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, you know, 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,

Starting point is 00:22:30 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.

Starting point is 00:23:09 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.

Starting point is 00:23:48 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. 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,

Starting point is 00:24:16 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 I'll 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,

Starting point is 00:24:37 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.

Starting point is 00:25:01 I really appreciate it. What a great show. Do you love Disney? 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. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life.

Starting point is 00:25:27 So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown 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.

Starting point is 00:25:54 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. Anybody who's seriously tried to lose weight is probably familiar with the term and the concept of 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 five, ten 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?

Starting point is 00:26:48 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 Setpoint 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 set point? What does that mean? Is it a real thing? Explain it.

Starting point is 00:27:31 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

Starting point is 00:28:13 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

Starting point is 00:28:58 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.

Starting point is 00:29:49 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

Starting point is 00:30:40 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.

Starting point is 00:31:25 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

Starting point is 00:32:23 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 maybe you don't have that second helping, as opposed to, you know, eating watercress and a glass of water. I think that a lot of people may feel that way. Unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:33:07 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 diet that was allowed in the medical community was during the World War II time frame. And the starvation conditions that they put participants under to approximate war-torn Europe 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 part as an element of this equation and explain that. How does that fit into this? We have been essentially programmed

Starting point is 00:33:59 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.

Starting point is 00:34:50 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'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.

Starting point is 00:35:26 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'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

Starting point is 00:36:12 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,

Starting point is 00:37:07 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. Are there things that people think are 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.

Starting point is 00:37:57 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

Starting point is 00:38:46 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

Starting point is 00:39:40 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.

Starting point is 00:40:29 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.

Starting point is 00:41:15 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

Starting point is 00:42:02 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.

Starting point is 00:42:46 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:43:37 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,

Starting point is 00:44:16 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

Starting point is 00:45:10 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

Starting point is 00:45:54 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.

Starting point is 00:46:36 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,

Starting point is 00:47:14 making negative statements more positive and positive statements sound more negative. And that is something you should know. I invite you to take a journey back into the archives of Something You Should Know. There are literally hundreds of episodes of this podcast. You can't possibly have heard them all. And they're really good. And they're sitting right there on the platform that you're listening to this episode right now.

Starting point is 00:47:40 So go ahead and give a listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro,

Starting point is 00:48:13 who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot,

Starting point is 00:48:28 and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table,

Starting point is 00:49:05 and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple,

Starting point is 00:49:30 or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Hidden World Inside Your Home & How to Lower Your Set Point Weight

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