Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Foster Mealtime Relationships & Increase Your Longevity with Shawn Stevenson

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Shawn Stevenson explores the impact of our food environment on health. We all focus on the quality, combination, and calories of our food, but do we consider the impact of our eating environment? In this episode, Shawn and Dr. Miindy explore studies that reveal the profound connection between social science, relationships, and nutritional science. Discover how understanding oxytocin, your parasympathetic nervous system, and nutritional facts can revolutionize your health. It's time to elevate your well-being by optimizing the environment in which you enjoy your meals. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep211. Shawn Stevenson is the author of the USA Today National bestseller Eat Smarter and the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter. He's also creator of The Model Health Show, featured as the number #1 health podcast in the U.S. with millions of listener downloads each month. A graduate of the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Shawn studied business, biology, and nutritional science and became the cofounder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance. Shawn has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Times, Muscle & Fitness, ABC News, ESPN, and many other major media outlets. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

on this episode of the Resetter podcast, I am bringing you my friend Sean Stevenson. So hopefully some of you heard my interview with Sean on his podcast. If you haven't, it was a really good one on fasting and women. His show is called The Model Health Show. But on this episode, what I wanted to bring him in to talk about, which is so powerful, is how the environment you eat affects the health of that food. Think about this for a second. When we eat, we put so much attention on the quality of the food, the combination of the food, the calories of the food.

But do we stop and think about the environment of food and how it affects what that food will do in our body? Well, Sean was definitely the man to talk to on this. If you're not familiar with him, he is a USA Today national bestseller for his book called Eat Smarter. He has also got the number one health podcast in America, the Model Health Show, and he has a new book out called Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. And this book is like what they call it Cookbook Plus, meaning that there's great recipes, but there's also great information in the beginning.

on how you create this environment in your home that sets you up to succeed with your food. So in this episode, you're going to hear all the studies. I mean, he has study after study after study that explains why there is this beautiful intersection between social science and nutritional science. And how when we use what social science is teaching us about relationships and connection and all the things I've been talking about with oxytocin and your parasympathetic nervous system. And we use that in combination with all the good information that science is teaching us about nutrition, that we actually can take our health to a whole different level than we knew possible.

So this was such a joy to chat with him. I do not believe that this information is gotten out into the world enough. so I am so excited to share with you why the environment you eat your food in matters and possibly matters as much as the quality of the food you eat. Sean Stevenson, enjoy. Hey, Dr. Vindy here and welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. Okay, well, Sean, I feel like you had me over to your house to have dinner, hence your podcast, your podcast house. And now I get to have you over to my house to have dinner. Although we're not eating, we're talking about some really cool nutritional things. So welcome. I'm so happy your hair.

It's my pleasure. And also, of course, we know we've heard this before that you are what you eat, but it's also you are what you think, you are what you share these different ideas. We're consuming this stuff. So we really are sitting down for a meal. So it's my pleasure. It's so well said. You know, that's been my latest, like, rally cry is that we need to sit down and with as many different people as possible. We need to engage even in conversations with people we don't agree with so that we can start to expand our thought process. And I can't think of a better place to put a bunch of people together to really vet some great ideas than a dinner table or even a meal table at all. So I want to start off with why did you write this book? Because it's not

just a normal cookbook. You've got some really interesting concepts about meals and socializing and the impact on nutrition. So why don't we start there? And then I have a whole bunch of questions to ask you because I have some new theories in my head that I think you're going to be able to answer. Of course. Yeah. So I'm a nutritionist. I've been in the field for 21 years and I'm a big fan of food, but I don't see food in the same kind of lens as folks that went to a traditional university like I did that get into this field. Food is so much more than just food. Food truly is. It's information. And there's this bustling field right now of nutrigenomics, nutrigenetics, and looking at how each bite of food that we take changes our genetic expression. It is that powerful. It's information, right?

And I remember in school, and we were taught this kind of fundamental process of how our copies of ourselves are getting printed, essentially, from DNA to RNA to protein. And I had a conversation with one of my mentors, and he's really the pioneer who pushed epigenetics into popular culture, Dr. Bruce Lipton. And in one of our conversation, he shared with me that, Sean, yes, proteins are kind of that fundamental last step that we see as far as the copies that were getting printed out. But one epigenetic input, like a bite of food, can alter the expression or the potential of those proteins getting printed out. There can be up to 3,000 different options on the copies that are getting printed of us. And that's just from one gene. All right. So we

have so much influence over that. And the reason that I wrote this book at its core is it isn't just the food itself. It's the conditions in which we eat. It's the environment that is, of course, determining our food choices themselves, but also how we're interacting with our food, how we're interacting with the people around us, deeply, deeply influences the impact of the food that we're eating. And so, you know, once I found out some of this data, it was like, I felt this burning within my in my spirit to put this together. And like you said, this is not a conventional cookbook by any means. Me being a big foodie, you're going to get that. You're going to get the most delicious. And right now, the book has been out for about a week now as of this recording.

And the internet is going nuts. People are making these recipes and sharing them and they are flipping out. And from, you know, older folks all the way to young kids are just loving the recipes because I've had some time in this field to figure some of this stuff out. But as At its core, the book also has 250 plus scientific references in it, like embedded in the content. That's so cool. So that you know, for example. That's cool for a cookbook. That's really cool for a cookbook.

I haven't seen that in a cookbook. It's never been done before. But it has to be in a way that is entertaining, that's awe-inspiring, that's fun, that's also beautiful and elegant. And that's kind of what life was qualifying me to be able to do, you know, working in this field this long and also having my show for the past 10 plus years and just being able to take complex things and make them palatable and entertaining and fun and just like, oh, I love that. Let's do that. Those kind of revelations. And so, you know, the last little piece here that we're going to

dive into is truly like, I've got a ton of science looking at this intersection between our social circles, our friends, our family, and the people around us and our health outcomes. all under the sphere of eating a meal together and how that can impact our health, and it is going to blow people's minds. Yeah. So are you saying that the environment I'm eating a meal in can actually trigger genes on and maybe trigger genes off, like has a genetic influence on me? Absolutely. And so we go through some of this in the book as well and pointing out some of these different studies, but it's really important to understand that the most influential factor, if we're talking about epigenetics, it's looking at the influence of our environment,

our external and internal environment. And we have these basically, they're kind of like antennas, that these protein antennas on our cells that are picking up signals from the environment, but all of that stuff going on around us, it's still going to be based on our perception of them. Because even our thoughts change the chemistry in our bodies immediately. And so let me give an overarching study just to kind of look at like what is the what is the most known as far as like factual data that we have on our relationships that influence on our health. And so I had a conversation recently with the director of the longest running longitudinal study on human health and longevity. All right. So that means longitudinal means they're following the same people.

And this has been going on for over 80 years. So he's the fourth director to have this baton pass. to him at Harvard. And the data indicates clearly it's not even close. It's not even close. Yes, sleep wellness is important. Exercise, good food. All that stuff is great. But the quality of our relationships is by far the most influential factor on how long we're going to live and live healthfully. The quality of our relationships. And so in addition to that, one of the studies that I sharing the book, and this is a massive study. This is a meta-analysis of 148 studies. This is a huge set of data. So looking at multiple studies together in one study, and this included about 300,000

participants as well. And the researchers found that having healthy social bonds led to about a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality for these 300,000 people. All right. So that means it's a 50% reduction in dying prematurely from essentially everything. That's how important of an epigenetic influence our relationships really are. So yes, absolutely. And I think some of us have heard stats like that before, but what I really don't want to get lost in this conversation is this marriage between the social science and the nutritional science, because it would be easy to hear that statistic and say, well, yeah,

I have good friends. We go out into the bar every Thursday night and we have buffalo wings and beer and it's like they're my homies. But what I think you're saying is that whenever we sit down to a meal, if we can add good principles of nutrition with good principles of socializing, now we have taken our health to a whole next level. It's not about eating a healthy meal while looking at Instagram and deciding you don't like what people are saying. And it's not about going out to the bar with the buddies and eating whatever you want, but you're socializing. You got to bring both those principles together. Am I correct? Absolutely. And these are things that our genes expect from us through our evolution. We did food together. We did food together. And if you look at, you know,

there are still some hunter-gather tribes around on the planet today. There are a couple of different locations where you could find them. But all of us, we evolved in kind of a tribal construct, and we did all of the parts of food together, hunting, gathering, the food preparation, and of course, eating together and also celebration. It is during this act where you even said earlier, like, alluding to like the dinner table is really a unifier for conversation, but it's also an important place for passing on culture and tradition. Prior to the the advent of books. This is how we passed on traditions and culture and insights and important revelations about our place in the universe from generation to generation was surrounding the celebration

of food and eating together. This is where the kids were getting, you know, there's dramatization of things. There's a storytelling. There's song. There's dance. We see dramatizations of this act. If you go to a place like Hawaii, for example, and they put on a loop. Wow, right? But that is something that is embedded in all of our culture. My wife is from Kenya, right? So there's a closer lineage or closer connection to that thing that everybody was doing on different parts of this planet. Right. And now the question is what happens when that part gets pulled away. Not only do we kind of move away from this tribal construct, I could say devolve in a sense, but we started to live. We created, you know, communities or neighborhoods.

But even within that, and there's still some more of that today where you still have your extended family in close proximity. All right, that was still a thing. Then, just in the last couple of decades, we've branched out even further. And oftentimes we don't have extended family nearby. And then just within the last 20 years, something we really couldn't have even seen coming, fractured our connection even more because even inside of our own household, we're now divided because of our devices.

People can be existing there at the same time and completely pulled into another reality and not present with the people in their own household. And so this is really a call to action to bring us back together because as a data indicates, there's something really important missing in that ingredient for a healthy, functional human being that was pulled away. And the last little part here I want to share on this is I'll tell you the study that prompting me is just like, I have to write this book. And there was, these research at Harvard were compiling data on eating behaviors of family members and their food choices for years. And I was just

like, what? This is, this is amazing. And I was digging through the data. And they found that families that eat together on a regular basis, strangely, were consuming more real foods, consuming significantly, not even close, significantly higher amounts of essential nutrients that prevented diseases in those family members. and they were just kind of naturally consuming less ultra-processed foods, chips and soda and all these kind of nefarious ingredients also. They noted they were consuming significantly less. And then couple that with a study that was published in the journal Pediatrics, where it's looking at specifically the health outcomes of kids.

And they found that eating together with their parents or their caregivers on a regular basis, they found three meals a week was the minimum effective dose. There was a dramatically reduced incidence of development of obesity in those children. significantly reduced incidents of developing eating disorders. And then for the parents, one other study I'll just throw in here as well. This was looking at office workers at IBM in the tech industry. And they were tracking their eating behaviors with their family and stress management with work. And they found that when these office workers were able to consistently eat dinner with their families,

regardless of how high their stress was at work, they were able to essentially metabolize that stress. remain more balanced, work morale, stayed high, productivity, stress levels stayed negligible. Again, it could be super stressful at work, but there was something that was helping them to metabolize and process that stress. By the way, I don't talk about this often. Also in the study, they found that even if there was conflicts in the family, if there was personal conflicts, all of that stuff was reduced when they consistently ate dinner with their family. But as soon as work and other obligations cut into that face-to-face, meal time, guess what happened?

Stress levels became intolerable. Work morale went down. Productivity went down. Their health started to go down. There's something essential. Our DNA expects with food and family, food and friends. Friends are included too. Food and community.

There's something really protective for us as a species when we do those two things together. I can tell you why this happens hormonally. And this is, it's so interesting, that you're talking about this because this was like a recent aha that I had watching so many people use the principles that I wrote about and Fast Like a Girl. And I was asking myself, like, why do some people use those principles and they drop weight really quickly? They get really good results. And other people seem to get stuck. What is the stickers? What is causing people to get stuck with that result? And when I dove into it, it all goes back to this hormonal hierarchy.

And the hierarchy is that if you are saturated with cortisol, you become insulin resistant. So it does not matter what the quality of your meal is, or I guess it does matter, but it matters as equally what you're going to do with that cortisol. So I got thinking like, well, what if you bring oxytocin in? If oxytocin comes in, then now cortisol goes down and now you're more insulin sensitive. Okay, well, how do we bring oxytocin into the meal? And I literally, Sean, I was like thinking this last, like the last couple of months. And I was like, we got to eat around people we love.

We got to eat in an oxytocin-rich environment. And that's what you're saying. And when you're saturated with oxytocin, your cells literally from a blood sugar standpoint, are going to be able to take that blood sugar, put it in, so that it can activate what it's supposed to activate in the cell so it doesn't get stored as fat. So I literally have been like thinking the environment matters as much as the quality of the food.

And you just proved it scientifically. Yes. And actually there's in some ways this even trumps that, which I'll talk about in just a second, but you hit it right on the nose because I'm a big Y person. I'm like, okay, this is crazy that people are getting these health outcomes. benefits from eating with people that they care about. And right, it goes to an oxytocin gets this nickname of like the cuddle hormone or the love hormone. And it's one of the few things that's been

found to essentially kind of neutralize the activity of cortisol. And it's not just like a surface thing. There's a big switchover because with cortisol, which is for a lot of us, it's that, you know, it's get up and go and all the things. We're very good at getting hype and getting up and getting going. But we're not very good at down regulating. Right. So cortisol is part of this kind of sympathetic, we call it, quote, fight or flight, nervous system, which for most of us today, which is always, it's always just running in the background. And this is sort of like a system that is binary. Like you're not doing both at the same time.

You're either fight or flight or you switch over to the parasympathetic. And here's the nickname for this one. This is where it all comes together. Rest and digest. Rest and digest nervous system. And so what we're seeing as well is we're seeing improved assimilation of nutrients. We're seeing higher levels of satiety when we're eating with people that we care about. And also, again, the most remarkable aspect, and you just detailed some of the kind of underneath the hood things is we're producing more oxytocin.

And it's so rejuvenative in so many different ways. And also there's another layer of this, which is just the psychological aspect, right? when we are with people that we care about, and in particular, especially for kids, just to feel seen, especially today, you know, we have a deep human need to feel significance like we matter. And so often, again, with all of our screens and, you know, all of us have been guilty of this, it's just being like, you know, not now, you know, I've just, you know, let me finish this thing. And our kids are just growing and changing at lightning speed. And so to move all that stuff to the side, to get real face time, and to allow our kids and ourselves, too, to feel seen, to feel important and to be able to offload stress, right? Just the act of talking, even if you're not talking about the thing, just the act of being present starts to offload stress. And especially, again, in a safe space where you feel cared for, this is why those researchers found it wasn't just a reduction in work stress.

There was a reduction in relationship conflict. They didn't have to talk about the conflict. But just being around those people, especially there's something remarkable about doing it with food that's really, really nourishing for our souls. Oh, I'm sure it's primal, don't you think? It's like we probably in the primal days, we didn't like take our piece of meat and like go off into the corner and eat. We ate around a fire. And so I'm sure there's a primal reason behind that. And it's interesting.

The other thing that you have me thinking is, so I've been working, personally coaching some people recently that have had some like food relationship challenges with food. Let's just put it this way. And I put continuous glucose monitors on them is what I do. And one of the women said to me recently, she's like, I don't understand how I could eat a high-carb meal with my family. She literally, she's like, I had family in town. She was staying in Copenhagen. She's like, I've had family in town. And all of a sudden, they show up. I eat all the wrong things. And my glucose goes down. Explain to me how that happened. And I, that's when I said,

because the environment you are eating in matters. You can manage your blood sugar more effectively if you eat in that rest and digest, in that oxytocin-rich environment. So I think it's so simple. It's so primal. And yet, why aren't we doing it? Yes, that is the question. And there's a reason why, of course. And you just really alluded to what I mean early.

Like this potentially trumps even the food quality itself, which of course it matters. And what we tend to do in our culture today, and there's even a name for it, is stress eat. We're stress eating. When we're in a stress state is when we tend to eat, quote, bad food, right? So things that are richer in sugar, in particular carbohydrates. But there's a primal reason for that too. These carbohydrates get serotonin going in our bodies a little bit more to just balance us out, make us feel a little bit more calm and balance. But sometimes we don't think, we don't realize that we're doing this. But the very best time to eat foods that we might slap a label on is being like a bad. bad food or a cheat meal or something like that is when you feel good. When you are in that kind of oxytocin state, when you're feeling good, when you are with friends and family, this is one of the things we see in other cultures where, again, the celebration, they might be having wine and bread and all these things, but they're still metabolic, their metabolic health is so far superior to people that even eating here, eating a, quote, healthy diet, but they're eating oftentimes

in isolation. And one of the studies, this was published in nutrition journal, found that, yes, we do have strong data affirming that when we eat alone in isolation on a consistent basis, in particular in front of screens, we tend to eat, have poorer food quality, we tend to eat more as well. And, of course, we see worse health outcomes as well. And so this isn't just guesstimating or thinking that this is a theory. Like we know that this is the case. We're just getting more and more science to affirm this. And so what we want to do is proactively use this to our advantage.

And as you mentioned, why is this happening? I mean, this is really simple. But we here in the United States, we invented the TV dinner. We invented. Oh, my gosh. Yes. I'm a product of the 70s. I had TV dinners.

Me too. I grew up in the 80s. You know, I had the Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and that limp corn, you know, absolutely. And the apple pie. The apple pie was in the upper right hand corner. Listen. And also, of course, like, it's changing even our palate, right? So it's all these soft kind of mushy. I'm eating the mushy steak, right? And so I'm not getting these flavor inputs and these different texture inputs that also drive us. Because after a meal like that, we have to have the apple pie. We have to have something with some texture, some crunch to it or potato chips or crunchy cookies or things like that. And by the way,

this is affirmed. I don't know if people have heard about this. It's called the Sonic Chip experiment. And it actually won a Nobel Prize, the experiment itself, an Ig Nobel Prize, which is kind of like on the periphery of the Nobel Prize, is things that are kind of weird that essentially can make people laugh, but also make you think. And so the Sonic Chip experiment, the researchers took test subjects and have them put on headphones so that they can modulate the crunch and the experience of the crunch from eating, not Doritos, Pringles. Pringles, because Pringles are uniform in that tall can. They're pretty much the same uniform, size, density, all the things. But what they found was that by increasing the volume of certain notes of the crunchiness,

it made the study participants feel like the chips were fresher than they were, about 15%. fresher and better for them, essentially. More enjoyable was the key word. So more enjoyment, better for them, fresher, all the things based on the sound. And this speaks to it like our experience of food isn't just about the food. It's not just about taste. It's textures. It's sound.

And this goes back. We keep jumping back into early humanity. But these were all essential inputs for us to, for us. for us to really find out if that food is good for us, if it's safe to eat. These are all inputs because there's a big difference between biting into a crisp apple and a soft, mushy apple, right? Yes. We would be averse to that.

But with processed foods, they found ways to trick our brains because it's not even, there's nothing real or healthy or natural about it at this point. So they manipulate certain aspects of the food to keep us coming back for more. I the thought of even biting into a crunchy, crisp apple, like I'm salivating thinking it's, you're right, it's the crisp. I'm like, oof, that sounds so good. So how do we create this environment? Because I did, you know, it sounds like, oh, as simple as just put yourself around people

you love, eat around people you love. But, you know, there's a lot of households where the families are fighting or you don't really love the people. Maybe you're at work and you're in a meeting. it's super stressful or maybe you're alone. Like how do we help support those people in creating a loving, I'm going to call it like a love bubble around them while they eat so that they get the best out of their food choices?

Thank you for asking that question. Such a good question. Our lifestyles are as diverse as we are as people. And we need to honor that because we are living in 2023 as of this recording. and, you know, we have all this innovation. We have all these cool things for us to engage with. And we have to look at the results for us as far as our health is concerned. You know, we have multiple epidemics of chronic diseases and mental health conditions that

have never been seen before. They've skyrocketed in the last couple of decades. So we need to be aware of that there's a mismatch happening. We have all this apparent innovation, but we're not doing well as far as our health is concerned. And so we don't want to shun all the cool stuff we have access to. that's all good. We could still, you know, social media and, you know, media and all the technology and all that stuff, that's fine. But we need, our genes are expecting us to interact with real people

in the real world. So how do we do that? And to transition into that is like the final point of how do we get here, which is processed food industry has made it seem like it's so complicated. Don't, you don't have to work anymore. Just get out of the kitchen. you know, put your kid a hot pocket in the microwave. Dinner is served, right? This marketing to us that it is difficult to take care of ourselves and it's difficult to feed our families. And they've made it ridiculously simple on the surface, but the mid to long-term ramifications is massive problems with our health.

And so wherever we are in the spectrum family, you just mentioned like sometimes we don't necessarily like the people that we might be living. All right? Yeah. And that's just a state of reality for some people. I don't know. Have you ever seen the TV show Yellowstone? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. All right. You know Beth Dutton has not finished a dinner with her family ever. All right. It just doesn't happen. She's going to be a problem. It's a great example. But with that said, you know your family better than anybody.

At this point, they are aware that Beth is going to run away from the table, pissed off, starting stuff, and then they're going to sit around and enjoy dinner after that, you know? And they do. They calmly do. That's so true. That's it. Or we can fight, you know, against the personality of the person.

Not to say that somebody's going to be that extreme, but what I've seen, and this is going to be very logical is that part of the disconnection that's happening with parents and with children and also, again, cross generations, is we don't address the monster while it's small, right? Because we're so out of touch with each other and missing out on the vital data that we're, whether it's your significant other, whether it's your kids, they're giving you feedback and data on how they're doing and what they're struggling with, what might be causing them internal turmoil. But if we're not checking in, because a lot of our communication, we know that the majority, this is top tier psychology. The majority of a communication is nonverbal. All right.

Right. So if you're not actually paying attention to your loved one, if you're not taking the time to actually see them and to be present, you're going to be missing out on a lot of that very vital data. So you could see, like, where are they really at? How are they really feeling? And I can see those little subtle things, but also just the act of. of when we're eating, you could see this kind of stress offload. You know, my kids, we created a culture where they're talking about their days,

where they're talking about this crazy stuff happening with these kids, the little Kardashian things going on just in like elementary school. My son, my youngest son will joke about it. It's like, it's not really that serious, but it's just like, what are these kids creating drama for, you know, with each other? But I would miss that if I didn't create an environment where he feels free to share those things. And so, okay, so we've got the kind of conventional family construct, but what if you're not living with family or you don't have kids right now?

Yeah. Again, we don't want to villainize having some time. Like you kick back, watch your favorite show and have a meal or on your lunch, whatever. That's cool. But what I would implore everybody to do is to schedule time each week. I'm a big, three, it was three in the data. Three was at minimum effective bills. Oh, yeah, three.

That's right. Good point. You only have to do this three times a week. But also, you know, just depends on where you are right now. If you're going zero to three, that might be a big jump. Just even twice a week scheduling. If it's a lunch with a friend, if it's just going and having coffee, it is so important for your soul, for your psychology and for your health, truly, to just,

we do so many things that are less important. Schedule that time. again, if your family isn't close by, whether it's a date night with your significant other, whether it's a coffee with your friend, schedule it. Make it real. Even the act of scheduling puts in place, like we schedule all this other stuff that is not nearly as important as your relationships and your health. Literally, we started this off talking about how our relationships are the most powerful controller of how long we're going to live. And by the way, in that study that I mentioned, one of the 148 studies of meta-analysis, that was from Brigham Young University.

They also noted, like, relationships were more impactful than overcoming obesity than exercise. They specifically noted those things. Like, yeah, those things are cool, but it is our relationship. So invest in that. And also, we need to make a shift in our culture. And we have to take it upon ourselves to do this right now. You know, I went to the number two. high school in Missouri. It was rank number two. Such a good school. I didn't learn a thing about

building healthy relationships, even though it is the most important determining factor on my health, on my success, on my happiness, on my habits. It is a tip of the spear kind of controller of everything else downstream. That's why it matters so much. But we're just not taught. You can accidentally have good relationships or accidentally have shitty ones. That's pretty much the state that we're in. We're just kind of thrown into this thing instead of like, no, that's what makes platforms like this so important is we could bring on the very best people in the world in their respective fields when it comes to relationships and learn from them. But we have to share this knowledge. We have to share it with our kids. We have to advocate for this start to get shared

in kind of conventional education settings as well. because the quality of our relationships truly, I can't even stress this enough how important this is. But last little piece here, sometimes if we feel like we're lacking that, we can tell ourselves a story that it's not possible for us. It's not accessible for us. And I'm telling you from the perspective of someone that was isolated,

that was I lived in Ferguson, Missouri at the time. I was the first person in my family to go to college, let alone graduate from college. And if you don't have a model, like it's just all manner of messed up things happening that are just obstacles in me figuring this thing out. I have a mattress on the floor at this one-bedroom apartment. And my health is terrible. As you know, I was diagnosed with the advanced arthritic condition of my spine and my bones when I was just 20, which that's years in the making to have the manifestation of that condition, degenerative disc disease at just 20. All right.

It's absurd. So I'm in massive pain. I am deeply, deeply feeling alone and a mismatch and feeling like I'm trying to do something good with my life, but it just doesn't seem to work out. And so I know what it feels like to feel isolated. But when I made a decision to get well, number one, which a lot of times we don't do, we just kind of like, well, I don't know, we'll see. You know, I'll just, I'll give this a try. I made a decision to get well, and little did I know that it would be through relationships that I was going to get there. I had a couple of, you know, just kind of like distant friends,

whatever. One of them, I had known her for like three years. And when I made the decision to get well, within two weeks, she took me to a health food store. I had never, we hadn't even been anywhere together before. It's just like, I was just riding in the car with her and we pull up here. I didn't know that it existed, you know? And so, Now I realize because some of us can be also, you know, extreme introverts, right? Yeah, I was going to say that's what we want to speak to is that person who loves being by themselves. I refuel that way. I would rather be hanging out with a good book and going on a walk by myself. I like a good book. All right. I get it. And I know how vital it is because even the most introverted among us,

we need each other. Our genes expect us to connect. We would not survive. Throughout our evolution, we would not be here without other people, helping us to, you know, those inputs from, you know, again, just even that touch and exposure. We need these things.

And last little cherry on top, when I was in that situation, and again, deciding to get well, deciding to make it a mandate for myself, to, and this is the tough part. Sometimes we have to close a chapter on relationships that are not serving us that could be hurting our health, really address those things, and sometimes to make room for something better. But we have to choose it. And we have to qualify ourselves. A lot of these things have to do with us getting better ourselves so that we feel truly like we deserve what we deserve. Because at the

of the day, we absolutely do, but sometimes we might not realize it. So I have a couple of thoughts came to me as you were talking about this. And I think you're the right guy to ask this too. So when we look at science and what we know about the research on everything, right? When you're talking about social research, you're talking about nutritional research, those are often done, unless it's like a meta-analysis, like the Harvard one, those are often done in a very contained environment. And then what I see that happens on social media is that we start debating science.

And we're like, no, that was done in mice. That wasn't done on women. And we start having this fight with each other about science if it's right or if it's not right. And I'm starting to wonder. And then we were like, oh, I'm not going to follow you anymore because you don't believe what I believe. And so I feel like as much as I love the studies, you're quoting, I'm also getting to the point where I'm starting to get frustrated with us using science as our guiding light for proper health habits because it's two one dimensional. And this is why I love what you said when we started, which is the social science with the nutritional science.

How do we bring all these pieces together for our benefit? So I ask you that because I love your studies, but do you feel like science is leading us in the wrong direction when it comes to health because it is so curated? And then we are having human arguments over it? So part of the reason that I approach things in the way that I do, utilizing the best peer-view data that we have, one of the things that I do, and this is a thing, it's like a full-time job, truly, to be able to dig through this data and to find out who's funding the data,

to look at, and here's the rub. This is the most challenging part. And I encourage people to do this. If they really want to work in this field and work as a research scientist or something of the like, you have to also dig up and look at published papers that have some validity to them that disprove what you believe. All right. So looking at both ends of the spectrum, because usually the truth is somewhere in the middle. And understanding a lot of these different studies are, they have a vested interest in affirming something. And so we have to keep that in mind in our back pocket because, and this was my initial intention. And by the way, even in this particular, I mentioned this earlier, I've been in this field for 21 years. And about 12, I'm sorry, 11 years now having the top health podcast in the country, several,

several times over, which kind of like, it's like billboard charts. But I brought something into play that didn't exist before, which was I use some peer-review data and then I go into common sense. All right. I use that as an open door because I know that the reality, the reality is just reality. And sometimes, especially for people like myself that are very analytical, that have a tendency of skepticism to have a little bit of science. But now we got to get into like this is based on reality. This is based on your individual experience. Your anecdotal data that might be ignored in peer-viewed literature is the most important

aspect of your reality. And we have to honor that. Absolutely. And so that's kind of been behind the scenes of how I think. And so now you'll see that replicated with a lot of my peers. And these folks, you know, I end up meeting them later on, but, you know, we use this, here's this study, and then we go into whatever. And so it was a format that I found to be helpful just to start to speak to different, because we think in different ways. We learn in different ways. And so I was, my attempt was to be more encompassing. And yeah, so again, we want to take some of this stuff with a grain of salt when it comes to the different studies that are that are out there. And also rejoicing the fact, that there are, even still, most studies, unfortunately, today are getting funded by the pharmaceutical industry, a process food industry. And it is what it is. Because just to get a grant,

if scientists, like students at school, they want to, they want to question something. They want to run some. You're not going to get money if you're going to do anything that goes against how everybody's profiting right now. So it's like it's very difficult. And we still do have scientists who are asking these really interesting questions, who are asking about how our relationships are really affecting us underneath the surface, asking how are, you know, there's the microbiome is having a moment right now, for example, like, how does our gut health influence our mental health and all these different things? So we've got great people asking questions, even the sonic chip experiment, for example, really interesting kind of funny, fun stuff. But, you know, that's, we want to rejoice

that, but also take it with a grain of salt. So would you say, say then you look at sciences as an opportunity to be curious about whatever they found. I find the word curious really helpful because if we're curious about what we see with science, then we can make decisions for ourselves. The phrase I always use is, science gets us in the ballpark. You get to choose what seat you're going to sit at. And we have to sort of integrate it for ourselves, which actually leads me to the next question that I have for you.

I think you're the perfect guy to answer this. And it ties into this environment that we're eating in is that so many people right now are getting health advice from their social media feeds. And I'm curious, my fear is that we've gotten to this place where we're looking for small little sound bites to determine the direction that we go with our health. Do you feel like social media is helping our health? or do you feel like it's hurting our health right now? That's such a good question.

You know, at the end of the day, we're going to experience what we're associating with, what we're tuned into. So people that are following, people that are out there teaching health information, they're going to have a tendency to engage in more of that stuff in the real world and to be potentially healthier. I think there's a higher likelihood because you're just tuned in.

Yeah. Station. Now with that said, it can be frustrating because everybody and their mother and father is, you know, coming with their perspective on things. And as you mentioned, you know, even though we've got the most robust data set ever compiled about human health that is saying, hey, it is our relationships that, you know, there are going to be people like, you know, my relationships mess me up. I am messed up because of that. And again, we cannot ignore that that's a story, but also we don't want to be the person who is tuned into, you know, another kind of virus, which is the missing the point virus that can get spread around, right? Because we tend to just see like, that isn't true for me and close ourselves off from a potential. So we want to validate and honor our own stories,

but also stay open. You said the magic word earlier. Stay curious. Don't refute something immediately. Look at things from multiple perspectives. There's a great definition of wisdom that, I learned many years ago is wisdom is looking at things from multiple perspectives. But I know for myself personally, growing up in the conditions that I did, I just saw through my one lens. I wasn't zooming out and looking at things from other people's perspectives, from a more of a meta perspective of looking at situations, good or bad. But our reality is based on our perception.

And if we've got one view of things, we're going to suffer. If something disrupts our view of reality, we're going to be a total mess. But even when a challenge comes up, it's like we can even, just by asking questions, for example, by being curious, we can instantly reframe things and find more of a, like a silver lining. I'm thinking about Silver Linings playbook. Shout out to Bradley Cooper. But basically, you know, like if there's a challenge coming up, it's just having no audacity to ask, what is this trying to teach me? What is this challenge trying to teach me? What is the potential

gift in this? Right. Or even if you're having a hard day, you know, you got a great, a big task in front of you, something that's really difficult that you are resistant to even get into asking like, how can I make this fun? You know? Like we have the power to reframe things very quickly. And it's also, I found it to be very helpful to, you know, there's a great exercise. in the book Thinking Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, from way back in the day. And I was first introduced to this book by Bob Proctor, who was like a left in personal development. Yeah, he was. And I cannot, again, coming from where I come from, how on earth am I having conversations with Bob Proctor? It is bananas. All right. But he shared this book with me. And there's this exercise to when you're dealing with a challenge and or you're just trying to accomplish a goal to seek counsel from your trusted. advisors, but you do this initially, right? So if you are wanting to improve your health, you know, you close your eyes, you know, maybe do some breathing exercises, and then you sit at a table. Here's we are sitting at the table. Yes. And you've got Dr. Mindy Peltz sitting here.

You've got Sean Stevenson sitting next to her. We're at your table. You've got Dr. Bruce Lipton sitting on that side. And then on the other side, maybe there's three other people. And you go around the table and you pose that question to them. Okay, I've been struggling for the last five years to normalize my blood sugar. Like, I don't want to be on metformin anymore. Dr. Mindy, what do you recommend? And just listen. Right. So it's like bringing in multiple perspectives. Like, there's so many cool ways that we can go about this, but we don't want to box ourselves in by seeing things from a limited view. Because another part of this freedom, another part of wisdom is seeking multiple perspectives. Ah, that's, that was so well said. Okay. I, I,

I have to finish up this interview with probably maybe the most obvious question that we should have started with. And I know you and I are both huge Michael Beckwith fans. So, and I'd be curious what he would say. We can maybe energetically involve him in this answer. But in any research that you saw where prayer before you eat has an impact on how that food is going to assimilate into yourselves. So good.

All right. I'm right here in this building at my house, Michael Beckwith has been here and he's conducted prayers for us before we eat many, many times. Again, I would have never in a million years thought that that would be my life, you know. And there are a couple of things. Like, this has been done for thousands of years by humans, by our ancestors. And part of this is, again, it's that opening the door of that switchover to the paris. sympathetic nervous system, right, to take a moment of pause, to slow down, to close our eyes, to breathe, and to listen to a message of connection. And even there's, there's an entity.

There's like, we know today even, you know, like the folks at Heart Math Institute, just when we're in proximity to each other, you know, the human heart has this very large electromagnetic field that extends beyond our bodies. And so these energies are interacting with each other. It's kind of like we're starting to sink up. We're getting on one accord. And this is affirmed by researchers at Princeton that just even a small, people that don't even know each other, small amount of rapport is created, our brains start to sync up.

So they start to, quote, mirror each other. All right. So it's starting that process of synchronization. So that's part of it. And also there's an energy exchange because we know from the, you know, know, the slit experiment, for example, the observer effect. We know that our observation of a thing changes the thing. We are, in fact, changing the world around us. And it sounds very like, it sounds like some science fiction stuff, but it is just reality. This is quantum physics.

We cannot help but do it. And so we are, in fact, influencing there's an energy exchange with that food itself. So yeah, you might want to pray over your food. And we also have other practices. You've got to find what feels good for you and your family as well, a gratitude practice. Take a moment to just go around the table and everybody could share three things that they're grateful for from that day. We could just take a moment of pause, a moment of presence, just to take a breath. But what it is is that's opening the door for connection. It's like that first domino for a truly beneficial and connective meal with people that you care about. So well said.

You know, I just heard something the other day. I want you to try this with your family. And it's blindfold eating. When you sit down, put a blindfold on, and then really experience the food and like taste it and feel it in the textures. Like when I heard that, I was like, oh, my gosh, I think I would probably appreciate my meal a whole lot more. If I had the vision sense was taken away, I could really dive into all the experience of eating and what it's providing that I'm probably missing with my eyes open. What do you think of that?

You said it truly. I mean, food is a multi-sense experience. And definitely we can get way too distracted from certain experiences that are just like, food really is an explosion. It's not ultra-processed foods, but just real food itself, there's so many dynamic notes. And humans, by the way, we have a very complex flavor palate, largely because of the intersection with our flavor sensors and our nose. It is the human nose is very special in the animal kingdom. We don't think about it like that because we're not like bloodhounds out here, you know, sniffing out, you know, drugs getting confiscated or whatever at an airport.

But our senses have been evolved to like humans eat a lot of different things. Far more different foods than any species ever by far. We eat so many different things. And so we evolve these senses to really know if a food is safe for us on an entirely different level. So yeah, little exercises like that can turn things on. I have to tell you as women, we actually smell out the best mate for us. And we smell it and interpret it as far as what that mate will do for our immune system,

knowing that when we reproduce, there's going to be an immune change that happens when you actually get pregnant. And there's, I'm sure you've seen this study, that when women are on birth control, it can alter their ability to smell the proper partner. And they get married, and then they get off birth control, and they have this shift in their relationship to their partner. So you bet, yeah, smells huge. We're not bloodhounds, but we are controlled by it. We just don't give it enough credit. So I just had to put that plug in there because I think that, I think smell is a very underrated part of our body when it comes to how we

make health habit choices and how we make choices in our life. And it's the strongest sensory experience connected to our memory as well. Yes. Yeah, because it goes right up in it. Yeah. So like we smell certain smells can bring us back to certain moments. Like few things can for sure. And also just that memory, like I know exactly how a bowl of fruit loops smells. All right. Like it's so deeply ingrained. But again, this is another thing for us to take advantage of together with our families. Right. One of the big first steps of food is the smells. I just did a segment on Good Morning America last week. And the, um, The room, the people behind the scenes, they were flipping out over the smells of this slow cooker chili that's in the cookbook. And they're just like eating the smells. Like they're like grabbing it out the air, you know. So it's just like it's one of those things that is so inviting and pleasant. And it's another thing to experience with people that you care about. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Okay. Well, before I ask you my last question, how do people find you, your cookbook, your podcast?

I hope people go diving into all of this. Thank you so much. So you can pick up the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook anywhere that books are sold. All right. It's out there. Barnes & Noble, Amazon, all the good stuff. I actually just saw today that it is officially a USA Today national bestseller. That list just came out today.

I'm very grateful for that. And we're not stopping. The mission is just getting started because we're creating a movement for family wellness and empowerment. And also I just saw because the book is doing. so well, Amazon has dropped the price by 20% on Amazon as well. So you can go to Amazon.com or an Amazon bookstore and pick it up there as well. But definitely a fan of supporting local bookstores and keeping them, keeping their doors open. There's a great vibe. It's going to a bookstore still. But you could pick up the book anywhere. It's such an honor. It's a smarter family cookbook.

And my show is called The Model Health Show, the Model Health Show. And it's available on all podcast platforms so you can find me there. We do masterclasses on every subject matter that you can imagine and also bring on the very best people in the world in their respective fields. Of course, you fit on there. The show was fire. It was so good. And one of our most downloaded episodes of the year. And so you can tap in there. And the great thing about that, again, we're creating this. All you have to do is click play. You know, these platforms is free. And we get to determine, like, what are we tuned into? Because we could be spending that time tuned into whatever else. And that's fine. But take that time and invest in your empowerment, you know, your education,

things that make you feel good and feel more powerful in this world that is often fighting against you. You know, you got to fill up your own cup. And so that's what it's really all about. And that's why I appreciate you so much as well because provided so much of that goodness for so many people. And I just want to thank you for that because we definitely feel it. Thank you. Yeah, our hearts are aligned. I think we both are deeply in this to create change. So, so thank you for having this conversation. Okay, my last question. And I'm so curious what you're going to say, what's your superpower? What do you think if you had to pick one superpower you bring to this world, what do you think it is? Such a good question. My superpower, and I'm not just saying this,

I'm a very big proof of concept person because it's not just me saying this. But what's what's been shared with me again and again and again is that my superpower is connection. It's helping people to understand things that would be seemingly complex in a very simple and palatable and empowering way. So that's really my superpower is taking the complex and simplifying it. that we can actually use it for our benefit should we choose to. Love it. I love it. Well, Sean, thank you. Literally, I've been really thinking deeply about food and the environment we eat.

And then poof, here we are having this conversation. So thank you for all the hard work and going through the science. And I hope everybody grabs your book. So appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you.

If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.