The School of Greatness - How FEAR Affects Your Brain, How To Strengthen Your Immune System & The 3 Important Fats For Brain Health w/Shawn Stevenson EP 1141

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

“As we grow ourselves, we start to become less influenced by the negativity around us.”Today's guest is Shawn Stevenson, who is a graduate of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he studied business, biology, and nutritional science. He’s the founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a company that provides wellness services for individuals and organizations worldwide. He’s the author of the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter and creator of The Model Health Show and today we’re talking about his book Eat Smarter: Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain and Transform Your Life.This is actually Part 2 of our conversation, so make sure you check out Part 1 by going to www.lewishowes.com/1140 You don’t want to miss that one!In this episode Lewis and Shawn discuss how fear affects your brain and body, the simple ways you can start strengthening your immune system, the biggest factors leading to chronic diseases, the 3 most important fats for brain health, and so much more!For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1141Read his new book: www.eatsmarterbook.comCheck out his website: www.themodelhealthshow.comShawn's sources that he mentions:Neuromodulation can stimulate or inhibit calorie absorption - Yale University9 out of 10 healthcare workers hospitalized with COVID-19 have at least 1 preexisting chronic disease - CDC95% of deaths associated with COVID-19 had an average of 4 preexisting chronic diseases and/or comorbidities - CDCObesity, anxiety and fear-related disorders, and diabetes are the greatest risk factors for death with COVID-19 - CDCMore episodes you might like as well:The Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod  

This is episode number 1,141 with international best-selling author, Sean Stevenson. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Maya Angelou said, You can only become great at the thing you're willing to sacrifice for. And Stephen Covey said,

Only the disciplined are truly free. The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites, and passions. Some good quotes today. And my guest is Sean Stevenson. If you were here for part one, then get ready for part two. As Sean is a graduate of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, where he studied business, biology, and nutritional science. He's the founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a company that provides wellness

services for individuals and organizations worldwide. He's the author of the international best-selling book called Sleep Smarter that has helped transform my sleep in a massive way, and the creator of the Model Health Show. And today we're talking about his book, Eat Smarter. Use the power of food to reboot your metabolism, upgrade your brain, and transform your life. And again, this is part two of the conversation. So make sure to check out part one as well by going to lewishouse.com slash 1140. You don't want to miss what we shared there. And

in this episode, we discuss how fear affects your brain and body and really the power of fear on the brain and the body. The simple ways you can start strengthening your immune system today, the biggest factors leading to chronic disease, the three most important fats for the brain health, and a lot more good stuff here. Again, if you're enjoying this at any moment, make sure to share this with a friend that you think would be inspired as well. Just copy and paste a link on the podcast platform, or you can go to lewishouse.com slash 1141 for the full show notes and share it with people there. Very excited about this episode. In just a moment, the one and only Sean Stevenson.

You think the mind can control and say, I'm going to have 1500 calories right now with this ice cream and donuts and nothing is going to be absorbed in my body. It's going to go out to me and you just manifest, you just decide and declare, no, it's not entering my body. Didn't you fire walk? I did, yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? Of course. I did it too.

I did it too. Anything is possible. Yeah, and actually a friend of mine, she stepped on a coal that was not in the fire pit. Burned herself. Yeah, Jamie Masters. She wasn't in the right mindset probably. Right, she just accidentally, it was like right there, just kind of like sitting there for a minute and burned her but anyways and we walked across that stuff man so hypothetically it could happen but here's the thing let me let's dive in a little bit deeper on what that looks like uh uh alia crumb out of stanford at the time when she conducted this study

she wanted to find out how our thoughts affect our digestion, how our thoughts affect how we assimilate nutrients. Give it to me. All right? And this is called the milkshake experiment. Love a good milkshake. So they blended up a batch of milkshakes, and they were all somewhere around 380 calories. And I detailed this in Eat Smarter a lot more.

So it might be 360, but I believe it's 380 calories. Now, so all the milkshakes are the exact same amount of calories. They're the same level and the same containers that they're passing out. Now, here's the thing. They take it and now they put labels on them that they are different amounts of calories.

On one set of milkshakes, they put that they're 180 calorie sensible milkshakes. And then on others, they put that this is a 620 calorie indulgent milkshake. Oh my gosh. But they're all the same calories. They're all the same. They're all the same. That's fascinating. And so here's what happened. Well, I think we got to get a little bit of the kind of Well, I think we got to get a little bit of the kind of endocrine biology here with basic satiety hormone.

So leptin and ghrelin. So leptin is a major satiety hormone. Makes us feel satisfied. We feel we're in our body. We're not ravenously hungry. When leptin is level and also leptin sensitivity, it's a whole other conversation. So we got got leptin satiety hormone then we have ghrelin, which is a bona fide hunger hormone. All right, but it's more than that It's more than that. It's also has to do with our Metabolic rate and other things too. But basically when ghrelin levels are high, it's driving us to go eat something

I think about it like the ghrelin gremlin, right? Don't feed them after midnight So the ghrelin gremlin Now with ghrelin levels going up that's going to drive us to eat but when they're going down it's going to make us inherently feel more satisfied so here's what happened the people who were given the indulgent milkshakes that were again they were higher calories same calories they say but they thought they were higher their ghrelin levels went down three times lower. What do you mean? They were less hungry?

Their ghrelin levels, their hunger hormones went down three times lower than what they actually consumed. Their desire to be hungry went down. Right. It went down three times lower. That's crazy. Okay. Just because they thought they were having a lot of calories.

Yes. They thought that they were having something indulgent that was very calorie dense. The people who had the ones that were labeled 100 calories since the shake, their ghrelin levels barely budged. It's like they were having a glass of milk and they were just like, I need some more. It's like they had water. Water. Wow. And they were like, soon after they're going to be able to get it.

Pour it back up. Yeah, yeah. Because they believed that the calories were lower in that particular item. That's fat. Now, I wonder if you believed you had 680 calories, would you actually add on a, is that a half a pound of fat? Or like a half a pound? This is getting into-

On a scale? This is getting into the metabolic effects because it's not just about calories. And we talked about this last time. There are these epicaloric controllers and I detail all of them in Eat Smarter. I detail them, but we talked about how the type of food itself controls how your body holds onto those calories or burns the calories off, right? We also go through how your metabolism works, how the process of fat loss actually works. where does fat go we talked about all that last time but so there's these epic caloric controllers one of them is your brain for example but also beyond that is your beliefs about what you're eating because

it's going to change the hormonal cascade right so so give me an example if I believe what I'm eating is high in calories, is lots of sugar, is, you know, bad for me, and I think this is really bad for me. That's terrible. Yeah. That's terrible. So when you're eating this and saying, this is horrible for me, instead of keep eating the donuts, what should you be doing? When you know you have something that's not the healthiest, but you're enjoying the sugar and the cheat of it. That's the thing.

That's the beautiful part about it. Enjoy it. For me, being in this space and why I found, I think, a really great lane where we saw so much success with all the patients that we're working with is because nothing's off limits. We get into this giving food morality where something is bad. And if you're eating a food that's bad oh man what does that say about you as a person so i mean i'm eating this bad food i must be bad oh man i can't control myself eating this and we get into these really complex psychological shaming ourselves yeah so so when you're gonna eat the best thing you're gonna eat the not optimal foods just enjoy it it. Just enjoy it. Enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to have fun.

It tastes good. The best time to eat something that we would consider a treat or we'll just say pizza or cake or donut. Is when? It's when we're feeling good. But we tend to do it when we're feeling bad. It's so true. It's when something's not going well in a relationship

or it's something at work. We're like, oh, I just want to. It tends to compound the issue, you know, but also they can be, if it's done with intentionality, it can be a part of the healing process. That's the thing too, because again, we get so black and white with stuff like, you know, you shouldn't be doing this,

shouldn't be doing that. It makes us humans, we don't like rules in a sense. Like it makes us want to rebel against the thing, you know? And so it can be a part of the process, but we have to maintain integrity. Because for example, carbohydrates, it's really interesting that, and I actually did a masterclass on this on my show recently

talking about natural clinically proven ways to increase serotonin production in our bodies. And so serotonin is a, it's a dual hormone and neurotransmitter. So it has multiple impacts on our endocrine system and on our nervous system. But serotonin is noted to be like this feel good vibe to it. Like when serotonin is optimized, like a lot of antidepressants target serotonin, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, but it's not making you produce more. It's just trying to reduce the metabolism of it so it stays in your system longer in a sense. That's a whole other thing.

So bottom line is this. Carbohydrates actually increase serotonin levels. Makes you feel better. In a sense. Now, this isn't 100% true across the board, but it's seen in peer-reviewed evidence that having a little whack of some carbohydrates can actually increase serotonin. A little french fries, a little, you know. Yeah, make you feel, get a little bit ahead of feeling good. But we have to put that in its proper place.

We've all experienced this, but we think it's the sugar high. It's not just that. It's what it does to your neurochemistry. It's what it does to your hormones.. It's what it does to your hormones. That's really, it's so much deeper. What do carbs do to your hormones? Well, it depends on the type of carbohydrates. The quality of carbs, yeah.

You know what I mean? And what time of day and everything. Yeah. So let's be clear. I mean. Doesn't your brain run on carbs? Like, doesn't it run on like sugar and carbs? So this goes back to, and I think this is important place for us to to get here is that the brain as i mentioned the blood-brain barrier has a

tremendous amount i think about the blood-brain barrier being like a a massively complex toll booth and at each of the tolls there's like the best security guard in the world like dwayne the rob johnson or like whoever people want to put in their mind. Maybe somebody really tough. Maybe, I don't know, the Hulkster. Right. I've been watching these A&E. Have you seen any of those? I've heard they're amazing.

The wrestling documentaries? I've got to watch these, yeah. So maybe it's Macho Man. Yeah, yeah. Maybe he's at the toll booth. But they're only allowing certain things into the brain. It's a very exclusive area. Sugar has speed passes to get into the brain.

As I mentioned, Harvard researchers have affirmed your brain will gladly confiscate half of the sugar you consume in a meal. All right. Now, with that said, what is the blood-brain barrier? How does this play into the inflammation? Cold complex. So the blood-brain barrier, it is something that is basically around the blood vessels. It's made from endothelial cells. So very similar to our cardiovascular system. All right. So we have the endothelial cells, but the difference with the blood brain barrier endothelium is that it is massively higher in mitochondria. So these are these energy power plants in all of our cells that are kicking off ATP. All right?

So these are like the metabolic nuclear power plants in our cells, right? So your blood brain barrier has a tremendous amount of these mitochondria. That's another reason it's so hungry for energy too. To protect your brain, it's running on a lot of energy. It's taking the energy to do that. So we've got the blood brain barrier, barrier, but the blood-brain barrier is one of the major issues that's getting targeted and broken down by the way that we eat today.

So now stuff is getting into the brain that shouldn't be there. So now the question is, what is causing the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier? I'll give you a few of those things. Yes. And creating more inflammation in the brain. One of them, as we already talked about, is sugar.

Rampant amounts of sugar. And I don't, I i want to be clear i'm not trying to demonize sugar and some people might like you should demonize it it's a part of our culture and we don't want to make it so that something is inherently terrible in this treacherous thing and something else other than is the best thing all right so we know that sugar is not ideal for human consumption, this heavily refined process thing. We know that. Okay. That we can look at things as good and not so good. It's not so good.

All right. Now, with that said, the amount of sugar that we're consuming, it can actually kind of create this insulin resistance taking place in the brain, like I mentioned before, and create neuroinflammation and break down all surrounding tissues. And also cause a big fit for the microglial cells in the brain, the brain's immune system. So what takes place is, it's even systemic. So diabetes with the rest of our body can cause also offshooting insulin resistance in the brain as well but the brain itself our neurons can can begin to become insulin resistant and so now we've got this sugar just kind of roaming free in the brain and tearing up stuff all right so

that's a big big problem so sugar number one number two alcohol mmm yep all right Number one. Number two, alcohol. Yep. All right. Now, again. Man, you're going to upset a lot of people. I'm not saying people can't drink, but we just have to be aware of this, that specifically, and there's a lot of peer-reviewed evidence on this now, alcohol is a known neurotoxin. And so what it does is it is able to actually cross the blood-brain barrier. It's one of those things that can cross the blood-brain barrier, which a lot of stuff can't get into the brain. It's able to cross the blood-brain barrier. And one of the first things that happens, though, is the release of endorphins. It makes us feel good.

Yeah. So we know that alcohol is a well-established neurotoxin, but we don't see it like that. It's socially acceptable. Very socially acceptable. But a significant amount of people actually pass away each year from alcohol poisoning, and they can be perfectly healthy and just have a little bit too much. And it can affect the parts of the brain that are responsible for breathing, that are responsible for beating your heart. These are some of the ways that we can die from alcohol poisoning.

Now, it's very unlikely. It's highly unlikely that that will happen, but we just got to keep this in place. And as a matter of fact, this was published in the BMJ, one of the most prestigious journals, the British Medical Journal. They found that even moderate drinking can have these very similar effects to accelerating brain shriekage. Well, this is what Dr. Daniel Amen has in his brain scans. I think there was 80,000 brain scans in a test. Don't quote me on that, but that's what I remember, where it's like he showed the brains without alcohol and with,

and I think all of them were smaller, I think, or something like that. Some were way worse than others with moderate alcohol. Maybe it's like once or twice a week, one or two glasses a week or something, shrinkage of the brain. And I want to find the exact stat of what that is. But, I mean, it's like if we know this information, why do we keep doing it to ourselves? And maybe we don't know the information. And that's why we just think it's socially acceptable and we're going to be with our friends.

We're going to have drinks. And one turns into three, turns into five. And then we can't wake up the next morning. But why do we do it over and over again? I've never been drunk in my life. And I'm not saying you're, you know, I have nothing against people drinking. But if it's hurting the brain,

if you're doing it consistently, more than once or twice a week, if you know it's going to hurt your brain, why continue to do it? Yeah, that's a great, you just brought it up, which is I don't think most folks actually know. We don't know on, we might know on a superficial level, but we haven't had the same amount of education

in these things where it's a part of the culture as much as ignoring health. We're just in an unhealthy state period. So in this study, they actually used MRIs and uncovered that even moderate drinking over long term Causes significant brain shrinkage specifically the hippocampus, which is the memory center of the brain Now it appears that the amount of shrinkage in the study appears to be directly related to how much a person drinks Wow, so if you so once a week, you should be fine

Yeah even a couple of times a drink so moderate drinking would be Even that can be get into the category of we'll say even four to five nights a week, one to two. One glass of wine or something. Servings of alcohol depends on what it is, right? But for some people that might be too much. But for some folks, most of the data that we do know is heavy drinking, right? But even moderate drinking, we've got to be mindful of our brain. Yes. We've got to take that into consideration. I mean, listen, I'm not here to shame anyone because I eat probably more sugar

than anyone should have in my lifetime. And that's my vice. That's something that it's like on the weekends, like I'm supposed to be murdering. You just murdered the cookies. You were just at my house. Murdered cookies, man. I've murdered your cookies.

And what do I have, like seven, eight cookies? I don't know. So it's like, I'll give myself a couple of days where it's like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. And I don't beat myself up for it because I know the rest of the time I'm not doing that. So some people might do that with alcohol and that's fine. Sugar's gonna hurt me or create more belly fat.

It's gonna be harder to like get rid of the belly fat, all these other things, and I'm aware of it. So it's like, how can I continue to optimize? How can I continue to let go of that habit and replace it with something more powerful and empowering for the greater version of myself, for my vision, for my health and happiness. And when I have it, enjoy it, but don't do it too much, you know? But that's the secret too, man, is that we also had an abundance of

real food as well, you know? So at my place is where you first, like, you didn't just, you tried guacamole recently probably previously once before with a friend and i was like wow you just dabbled in it but now yours i like yeah a lot of it you got it you got that guac in you i liked it and you know wife made it amazing though it was like i don't think i can have normal guacamole i think it was like it's got to be seasoned the right way you know it's it'sarter. Is that the recipe? It's in there. It's so good. So I was very,

growing up the way that I did, I never, I didn't know what avocados were. Like I had no idea until I was in my 20s. Hot pockets. Yeah. So,

and I mean, honestly, man, you know, I ate fast food every day. As long as I had like $2 at least, every day. And I was in college.

But it also is just in the environment. You know, the closest thing to me was is just in the environment. You know, the closest thing to me was a liquor store, then, you know, Lee's Chicken, Domino's, McDonald's,

Burger King, Dairy Queen, Chinese food restaurant, but this was like bulletproof glass. Like, they're not cooking good stuff for you. Arby's,

Krispy Kremes, Jack in the Box. This is all within like a mile radius of my house. And that's not even all of them. Papa John's, I can go on and on and on.

In multiple directions, there wasn't a gym around me. I didn't, that wasn't a part of the environment. You know, being from Ferguson, Missouri, that's where,

you know, I went up, I spent my entire time, you know, in college and also just even when I got married. We're still in Ferguson, Missouri, Ferguson, Florissant.

For the majority of my adult years, actually, I was in Ferguson, Florissant. And so we just didn't have, we weren't exposed to what health looked like. The first time when I found out that Whole Foods existed, it's so far away from me. But there was only one in all of St. Louis, by the way. Now you live like three blocks from one. In L.A.? You can literally throw a rock and hit a whole food. I know.

I mean, it's crazy. I'm not used to this. It's amazing, right? It's wonderful. It's wonderful. It's upgrading. But the thing is, also, we can get this conversation of being fashionable and being about real health. Because there are definitely some challenges on what real health is here in this city as well.

Sure, sure. But anyways, that's a little sidebar. Sugar, alcohol, which is a neurotoxin. What's another thing that increases neuroinflammation? Another one, and this is really interesting, and this is very timely for this. What I was actually going to lead into was right now being aware of what real health is in the prevention and susceptibility to viral infections. Viruses can damage and break down the blood-brain barrier, create inflammation in the brain. Listen to this. So this was published in the peer-reviewed journal

Trends in Microbiology, found that viruses can directly disrupt and damage the blood-brain barrier. But here's what I wanted to share with you. And this is new. I just, I'm sharing this for the first time. This was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. And it found that there's a troubling discovery recently that SARS-CoV-2 is able to interact with the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain itself. What does that mean? How do you get out of the brain? That's the thing.

Once it gets in there, it doesn't even matter. What are the downstream effects of that? So this virus is able to make its way to basically traverse the blood-brain barrier somehow. Maybe the blood-brain... And this is for me, I always think of a meta perspective, like what are the samples? What is the state of health of the person? What is their blood-brain barrier health? How is it able to is their blood-brain barrier health? How is it able to traverse the blood-brain barrier and get into the brain? Or is it just this virus is this particularly nefarious? You know what I mean? And so the question is, what do we do about this in defense? We have to be as healthy as possible. We know that even though the marketing around this is that this particular virus is indiscriminately hurting people. But I think maybe we shared this when I talked with you last.

I'm not sure, but I think it's an important point. You know, I've got many family member and friends who are in the health care industry and even working on the front lines. And we tend to think that, of course, number one, they're going to be hardest hit. It would be obvious if you think about it. They're around it all day long. Right. And these are just absolutely amazing folks. However, what folks don't realize, and we can maybe put people, the link to this in the show notes for people, because this is what I do.

I'm a research scientist, you know, almost 20 years in this space. If you go to the CDC site and you look at who is actually being affected, because with healthcare workers, it is the biggest vocation being affected. If we're talking about job for job by SARS-CoV-2. But what's not shared and what's on the CDC site is that nine out of 10 of the healthcare workers hospitalized with COVID-19 had at least one pre-existing chronic disease. It's not two out of 10. It's not five out of 10. Nine out of 10. Nine out of 10, nine out of 10, nine existing chronic, at least one. Wow. So it's not indiscriminate. Okay. Yeah. Because we've got

at this point, people have got the PPE. There's still a susceptibility. And the other part is about 75% of them were clinically obese. And it's right there. The CDC is where people, if you post anything, talk about it's getting directed to the CDC, but most people are not analyzing the data on the CDC. I love it. Right. I love it. But also it's highlighting again,

the thing that's not getting addressed, which is let's get our citizens healthier. When are we going to talk about helping to reduce this epidemic, these multiple epidemics, pandemics is epidemic expanded kind of multiple places. What is the epidemic? Is it neuroinflammation? Is it obesity? What is the main

causes in your mind that is hurting us? Yeah. We have an epidemic of chronic disease, period. Chronic disease. We have epidemics of, for example, an average of 630,000 people die from heart disease every year here in the United States. 600,000? 630,000. Die from a heart disease? Heart disease. And what causes heart disease? Stress, obesity, neuroinflammation, what else?

It's a complex disease. It's the number one killer. It's crazy. But here recently, and this is an unfortunate thing is that this is a footnote. It's not even talked about. thing is that this is a footnote. It's not even talked about. 2020, when SARS-CoV-2 was the headline, almost 700,000 people died from heart disease. It jumped up significantly. Really? Because of the stress? Because of all things, all of it. Absolutely. Stress, disconnection from family.

Yeah, wow. We're eating worse than we ever have prior to the pandemic. Because I was there. I was analyzing the numbers right out of the gate. The first couple of months, I was looking at processed food companies. I was looking at their profits. Oh, they're probably spiked. One company was about to go out of, one of the big ones was about to go out of business. And then?

They're filing for bankruptcy. COVID saved them. Shut up. Gyms closed. People weren't working out. People weren't exercising. People not getting out. So sit around at home.

You're getting Postmates or you're getting Uber Eats or whatever it is delivered to you all day. We are now far worse. We are now far sicker and more susceptible to viral infections than when it all started because we still have not focused on health. And we can do all the superficial treatments. You know, we can do the distancing. We can do fill in the blank. Right. Right. But we also, because we were in fear, because people were so influenced by what the quote experts were saying, you could have also said, this is an important time for you to really

make sure that you are getting your sleep because your sleep is a primary controller of your immune system. Even with medical interventions and people taking an array of drugs, whatever type of drug they might be, whether it's a oral medication, injectable, and their ability to actually prevent the disease dramatically goes down when people are sleep deprived. When they're sleep deprived, wow. Because your immune system is largely regulated. The vast majority of our immune system is located in our gut, for example. And one of the things that we've noticed is that there's even a changing of the guard

that takes place with our microbiome, even as the day goes on. The microbiome is so easily influenced by small things. I mean, if you sneeze, your microbiome is going to make a shift. But when we're sleep deprived, there are some really negative things that take place. And one of the studies that I actually mentioned is they took test subjects and they wanted to see what would happen when they just cross a bunch of time zones and see what would happen with their microbiome. And so they took stool samples, you know, had them poop in a little nacho basket. That's how we do it. We could send you one in the mail. You could send it in and get a stool sample done. But they took stool samples and they analyzed their microbiome cascade.

Because one of the things that we know today is that there's a microbiome cascade that's associated with obesity, insulin resistance. So when people in my clinical practice, they can get a stool sample done, I can get the report. I can have a high probability of knowing what their body composition is just based off their bacteria cascade, whether or not they're obese. And so we know this now. And so what they did was, and these are healthy test subjects, and then they have them cross a bunch of time zones

and they retest them. So it was like a 10 hour time difference. And they found that the bacteria basically get this kind of very strange jet lag. And their bacteria cascade started to shift more towards one that's associated with obesity and insulin resistance just in a day. By traveling across time zones. Just in one day. So what should we do when he travels across? Because also, I didn't mention this, their sleep is disrupted as a result. They're not sleeping because of it. Right. So their sleep is

disrupted as a result. But the good news is just by them getting back onto a routine within a couple of days, it normalized. So we can get better, but we know how quickly things can go wrong. And this is another big part of this equation because there was a lot of pushback happening in the beginning. Even with many of my friends and colleagues who are just at the top level of the health space of like, well, you know, we just have to do these superficial things because we can't get people healthier overnight. And here we are, we're going on two years here soon. All right. We're about a year, we're over a year and a half into this. And the conversation has not shifted to getting, what are some of the clinically proven things, simple things people can do

to fortify their immune system and help to reduce their risk of chronic diseases? Because we know that is the number one thing. What are those things? The number one risk factor. What are those things? Sleep, healthier foods, fasting, intermittent fasting. I'll give you an example. More water, what's the...

Based off peer-reviewed evidence. So researchers at Appalachian State University found that simply just going for a short walk... In nature? Instantly, just anywhere. Just go for a 20, 30-minute walk boosts your immune parameters most notably for neutrophils and also natural killer cells wow right it's a temporary

boost yeah yeah but what if you're doing this consistently like america make sure that you you know um you wash your hands socially distance but also make sure you get in your your 20 minute walk today america right we can create an absolute transformation in our culture because people to do it get get five 1,000 steps right then through ten thousand get a thousand steps in right something if that is if this is if this is framed as A way to help you to defend your body from this nefarious condition, which it is We know that the biggest susceptibility I'll share this with you as well and this again it's on the CDC site 90 90 over 95 percent of the people who passed away with SARS CoV 2 on the death certificate had an

average of four pre-existing chronic diseases and or comorbidities really 95 percent not over 95%. Had an average. Had four preexisting conditions. And or comorbidities. So it's not just pre... What's a comorbidity? So this could be they have SARS-CoV-2, but then they also have influenza. They have SARS-CoV-2, but they also have pneumonia.

So these are all comorbidities. But we know that at least one preexisting chronic disease across the board is included in that. Now, what about the chronic disease? What we focus on, though, unfortunately, is just the people that are, quote, perfectly healthy. Right. The less than 5%. And showcasing these people and be like, look, this person died too.

And so we don't talk about the underlying issue, which is, again, getting people healthier. But here's the thing, too, which the perfectly healthy aspect, that's all still going to be debatable. Because you and I can be as's all still going to be debatable because you and I can be as healthy as we want to be. If we are in a state where we're really stressed, we're in fear, we are in a position where we are sleep deprived temporarily, our immune system can absolutely get trampled up. And it's going to increase our susceptibility to viral infection. This is what I mentioned to you about when I was a kid growing up, my dad wouldn't allow us to, he would turn the TV or he would mute it if there was ever medical commercials on. If there was ever a drug commercial, things like that, or alcohol,

he actually would mute or turn the channel so that we wouldn't be susceptible to all the different messaging of the medical industry. If you're feeling this, if you're feeling this, you need X, Y, and Z medicine. And he really believed that that was causing a lot more fear in us kids when we would consume and watch this commercial, this messaging, this influence over and over. Because it was pretty much every other commercial was like a drug commercial from what I remember. Because he was always turning it off. He was always turning the channel because he wouldn't want us to be consumed by fear. What about the chronic disease, if that's even considered that, of fear in the country and in the world?

You know, we could be as healthy as possible, but if you have fear in your mind consistently thinking, I'm going to get this or I'm going to protect myself. What about eliminating fear? How do we do that? I love you. This is why, like, this is going right to, listen, listen, I have not shared this yet. This is from the CDC. And so they were looking at 5 million, almost 5 million, 4,899,447 hospitalized adults

and 540,667 patients with COVID-19 of whom 95% had at least one underlying medical condition. But let me tell you the strongest risk factor for death when they actually contracted the virus the strongest risk factors for death and this is according to the cdc and this is these for folks listening and even you know watching some of this stuff is seeing is believing so we've got to put this in the show notes for people to be able to go you can see the actual notes from the cdc study yeah the strongest risk factor for death number one was obesity which we've already talked about

number two was anxiety and fear-related disorders gosh number three was diabetes uh diabetes with complications oh my gosh the second anxiety related issues wow that was the number two reason for death number two based on the cdc number two reason for death. Number two. Based on the CDC. Number two, risk factor. Risk factor. Associated with death. Oh, wow. Risk factor. Okay.

Man. And how much of that has to do with the brain and mindset? Nobody's talking about this. What happened during the past year and a half? Has our fear levels gone up or down? In general, up. Exponentially. Yeah, yeah. Exponentially. Yeah, yeah.

Exponentially. And this gets into the place of ethical information, you know, with the media. Wow. And, you know, some folks might have seen some of the exposés done on, you know, some of the news organizations getting caught on like a hot mic, for example, and admitting that they're putting the death toll. The CNN, I think, or something. Yeah, I shared that. I was like the first person. I packaged it up. Now, I didn't and admitting that they're putting the death toll. The CNN, I think, or something. Yeah, I shared that. I was like the first person. I packaged it up.

I didn't do the report though, but I just created like this viral thing because I did some of the science behind what was happening as well. So they admitted to putting up the technical director. Right? Yeah, the death toll ticker on their taking human lives

and turning it into a death toll ticker. Anxiety. You see that going up like every moment. He admitted to doing it because it drives fear and it keeps people watching oh my god with his own mouth you know and so and also one of the things i put into the culture very early on i also had the counterbalancing thing which is like we can i want to be informed but we don't have to be inundated also share the recoveries. Let's have a recovery ticker. Let's have a people who are, you know, who have asymptomatic, who might've contracted the virus, but they're not sick and they're okay. Their immune system did what it's supposed to do. Let's have that ticker as well. And I put that into culture and the person who was capturing

the data, she asked him that, like, why don't you have a recovery ticker as well? He's like, he thought about it for a minute. He was like, well, that's not scary. That's not scary. People won't watch. We need to make money. That's it. We're trying to get eyeballs. If we get down to what it's really all about in the corporate interest now, because news isn't news anymore. It's entertainment. And a lot of folks don't realize that practically every major news station shares at least one board member with a pharmaceutical company. It's crazy. And the pharmaceutical industry invests billions, billions of dollars every single year into media. Billions of dollars.

What are they going to do? Are they going to recommend, you know, have me on, which I've been on all the major news networks, but people aren't tuning in for that. They're not tuning in to hear me talk about you know drinking water and getting sleep man you know what I mean but I still do that stuff just to plant some seeds but truly people are tuning in to be inundated with fear catch the sports in the weather and he also shared that they also 90% of the content that they do is around fear fear based content but then they have a one moment story he says like at the end, and he said this was with his words.

He was like, to be like a little bit of ice cream at the end of the pain. Oh my gosh. To help to alleviate the pain, but we're about to hit you with more of it. And this is the thing. That's why I don't watch news. I don't watch the news. I might flip it on for a moment to be like, okay, what actually happened here? But I can't consume it for hours.

Otherwise, it just makes me feel sick. It makes me feel sad, depressed, frustrated. And I think I'd rather be informed and educated and be able to take action on what I need to do personally in my life or if there's a cause I need to support from a place of mission and purpose and intention as opposed to reaction, of mission and purpose and intention as opposed to reaction, fear, anger, and reaction. And I think a lot of people have responded with reacting out of a place of fear as opposed to responding from a place of mission, love, solutions, community. And I think if we can start to shift that, we'll just feel better all in all. This is all really pointing to one of the most important takeaways from this

conversation, really just in our world today, period, is how we might think that we're controlling the way that we think. We might think that we are making decisions based on logic, but we have very primal programming as well. And we're very, we're very influenced by the world around us. We're, we're hardwired because it's a defensive mechanism. It's helping us to get to this point. We have to be aware of threats, but the, the way that we live today, it's not normal threats. We're not in threat of starvation necessarily in our culture. We're not in, we're not, we don't have to worry about a tiger out there. Yeah. What, what it really is, it's a lot of manufactured fear.

Not to say that there aren't real world threats. But the vast majority of people are safe. Safe. But you would never know that if you ever turn on the news. And so now here's the problem is that when we're exposed to these things, we take it with us. This was published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. And people were instructed to watch just 15 minutes of the news. And they were actually tracking their mood disturbances, tracking their metrics.

And they ended up having increased levels of anxiety and mood disturbances. But that's nothing. Here it is. The most shocking part is even after distracting them with another activity after watching the news, they were not able to return to their baseline levels of mood. They picked up that anxiety, that mood disturbance, and they took it with them. Wow. That's the thing that we don't really think about is that it really does, especially if it gets deep driven, it starts to change our chemistry. It changes our biology.

And it also can change our brain because we're thinking thoughts when we're seeing that stuff. How thinking and thoughts really get created is it's like taking something that you don't know and connecting it to something that you do know. So a fear thought, a strong fear, it's going to connect with a lot of other fear instances

that you have already in your filing cabinet. Other fears, it's gonna stack. It's gonna start stacking. And this is, we tend to see this happen, like we play this out in relationship context. You know, like if you get into it about one thing, it gets tied to all the other problems that you have with the person.

Right, right. You know, like it's one of the, but we can use that for our good as well and understanding how we learn stuff. And even how I teach, I like to take something that people might be aware of and then connect it to something that is new. So in Eat Smarter, I take people through and teaching them how the fat loss process works by giving an analogy of going to the movies.

You know what I mean? But on the other side, if we're not aware that this is taking place, that we're getting this exposure of fear, it's changing our neurochemistry and our perception of everything. It's coloring the neurochemistry and our perception of everything. It's getting it's coloring the way that we see the world and it's connecting to all the other fears that we have. Not all the other fears, but other fears, especially when we're talking about imminent death. You know, for what the media perceives, the reality is very different. Now, this is something that we definitely need to be aware of, be cautious of, because even the origin of it is complicated. Like we're still, there was a time where even if you talked about the origin being

other than what was disseminated in the beginning, people were getting censored and all this crazy stuff. And we're not having logical, rational conversations about science. That's not science. Science is open. Science is constantly looking. And this is the key. this is going to sound absolutely nuts and a big reason why i feel that i'm in this space at this level is because i'm willing

to be wrong like i'm coming into it actually i'm coming into it you're wrong yes i know that i have a cognitive bias i know that i have cognitive biases towards what humans have done the longest and so if anything comes up against that, right? So for me, it's just like, okay, well, humans have been eating real whole foods for, you know, countless, you know, centuries and, you know, thousands of years. And now we've got a Twinkie, right? So just like, well, maybe the Twinkie for me, my cognitive bias is that Twinkie is probably not ideal, but I could be wrong. And I'm open because this Twinkie might it might have unlocked some genetic whatever dormant thing where we now we're like, I don't know, we can teleport or something. Right. I'm open to being wrong, but my bias is there.

But I have to come into it with my bias and look for the ways that I'm wrong. It's hard to do, but it's like a muscle. Eventually you get to a place where, you know, it's beautiful. It's like a joyous thing. And also when you embrace that, funny enough, like you don't end up being wrong as often because you're taking a meta perspective. You're looking at all the pieces. And so what I tend to share from is like, what does the majority of evidence say? And this is a big thing too, and I'm glad I get to talk to you about this and share this.

Just about every single thing you can find that has peer-reviewed evidence on it, you could find something that says the opposite. Sure. So it's like a documentary that shows like, veganism is the way, and then it's like, well, carnivore is the way.

Meat only, meat and liver is the way. You know, it's like there's science and proof and evidence on both sides of the extreme. And each person, each front person for it is going to believe wholeheartedly that their way is the right way. They're going to find the evidence that backs it. And oftentimes they're not trying to be hurtful or nefarious. That's the thing. We have to come into it with a little bit more compassion for our teachers as well.

Because, and I know a lot of these guys are my my friends and colleagues but there's degrees of that by the way but also they've seen the majority of time they've seen incredible results with patients they've worked with and they're trying to save lives and it might sound absolutely harebrained and crazy to these other people over here but that's where they're often coming from it from coming from that place. Not to say that's 100 percent true. But here's the thing. I know that there's also a lot of people that are doing their thing and they're not getting the results that the other people are getting. Right. And this is because we're also unique. There is no one human diet. Right. The only thing that we know for certain is a human food is is breast milk.

Everything else we're just experimenting with yeah you know what i mean and even oh this is a good segue actually because people are so we're inundated with these ideas for example like saturated fat being so terrible for you human breast milk there's a massive amount of saturated fat in breast milk it can be upwards of 30 to 50 saturated fat for building that baby's brain. Now, as we get older, our gates for saturated fat from our food, like I said, we have the blood-brain barrier, the gates that allow unsaturated fat actually go down. But also, breast milk has a significant amount of cholesterol also. And when there's a disruption with cholesterol synthesis for babies from their nutrition, this can lead to long-term degenerative neurological disorders.

Cholesterol is incredibly important. So this gets into this conversation of these three primary fats that the brand is made of that I don't think a lot of people realize. Yeah. So we've been talking about inflammation. Yeah. So we've been talking about inflammation, but the underlying thing is really looking at what are the sustainable materials that don't allow for fires to take place in the first place. So three good fats to help the brain. Three fats. These are three types of structural fats I'm going to share with you. This is different from dietary fats specifically, but we can get the foundational elements from our

dietary fats. So the human brain itself is primarily water, which we can get the foundational elements from our dietary fats. So the human brain itself is primarily water, which we've got to come back and talk about this right after. It's upwards of 79% water, 80% water potentially. It's the most water-dominant organ next to your lungs. It is a water-based organ. So water really matters. But if the dry weight of the brain, so water excluded, the brain is upwards of about 60% fat. We are fatheads. And some people realize this, a lot of people who are versed in health and passionate about health know this already. But what people don't typically know, a very small amount of people know, what are those three fats? The number one, these are not in of people know, what are those three fats? The number one, these are not in any particular order, but there are three.

The first one I'm gonna share is phospholipids. Okay, phospholipids. It's one of the primary structural fats that the human brain is made of. Phospholipids give our brain cells shape, they give our brain cells strength, they give our brain cells strength, they give our brain cells elasticity, right? And these are very important characteristics.

We want our brain cells to be strong and robust, to be able to handle damage, also to be able to generate and support a lot of energy. Right? We want them to be, we want them to have an adequate shape to allow the functions to happen. We don't want brain cells like our brain cells might have. You know, we've got like the glial. These are astrocytes or something. Maybe we talk about this in a minute.

But we've got some cells in the brain that might look like this, like star shape. But then this brain cell over here is like, I don't know, looking like an M&M and it's just not a peanut M&M. It's just like not matching up to the structure that would create robust health. And then also the elasticity, we want the brain cells to be adaptable. And so phospholipids help to support something called signal transduction, which is the brain cells being able to talk to each other, which is kind of important. So phospholipids. Now phospholipids are- What are the foods that support- Sure, sure. I'll share that. But I want to share one specific thing because

dietarily speaking, bringing in from our diet phospholipids, there's a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study. And I map it out in Eat Smarter. This is like a gold standard of clinical trials because we've got a specific implement and we're seeing what happens. Randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study found that the inclusion of phospholipids helped to improve attention and reaction time when people were under stress. So they put them under acute stress and phospholipids helped them to perform better. So they noted subjectively also reduced participation anxiety with the inclusion of phospholipids. All right.

So this is some really cool stuff. But these are structural facets the brain is actually made of. Where do we get them? Phospholipids are made primarily out of omega-3 DHA and EPA. All right. And I'll talk about that in a second. But we can also get them directly from certain foods. You're going to find them in fatty fish.

You're going to find them in egg yolks. You're going to find them in egg yolks. You're going to find them in oats. You're going to find them in foods like spirulina. You're going to find them in fatty cuts of just different fatty type foods as well. So fatty cuts of things like beef, for example, if it's grass fed. And I don't want to get into a place of like what's better you know a plant plant version or animal version i just want i'm just sharing where you can find sure these phospholipids nuts as well or no yeah certain nuts also uh soybeans and for some people like soy is going to be like the the the the the absolute joker or thanos of this situation you know just depends on the

i'm just sharing where they are and please understand even with the conversation of soy i did a full like description and breakdown of the science around soy in the book um what we're what we've done with soy is not what's been done traditionally you know people never ate soy dogs soy ice cream soy sandwich slices slices, soy nuggets. Soy fish. All of that. All of this heavily refined processed soy is more used in cultures. You know, if you look at Okinawa, for example, you know, it's a little bit more of a condiment in a sense, you know, like used to make various things. But oftentimes also it was fermented whenever it was used primarily too.

So that's a whole other conversation. So phospholipids is one. Phospholipids. But these are some a whole other conversation. So phospholipids is one. Phospholipids. But these are some dietary sources you can directly get phospholipids. But as I mentioned, they're primarily made of EPA and DHA. These are two types,

docosahexaenoic acid and then e-casa pentanoic acid. So DHA and EPA. Okay, cool. And so DHA and EPA are two of the most important. These are two of the most important. These are two of the most important. Like today, I want people to proactively get yourself an EPA and DHA supplement, specifically DHA.

It's that important for you? The reason for this, dude? Listen to this. And again, working with Daniel Amen over the years and gleaning some of this information, but the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had folks include some DHA supplementation. And just within a matter of months, they dramatically improved their memory, explicit memory. So like remembering events and things like that. And also they were able to improve their reaction time just by increasing the DHA. Now here's the other part. In the journal neurology, they used MRIs to actually look at the brain, and they found that people who had the lowest intake of DHA and EPA had the highest rate of brain shrinkage.

Oh, man. All right. So what they found, the number is less than four grams a day was associated with accelerated brain shrinkage. Six grams and up had the most shrink-proof brain so dha epa specifically so where do you get that fatty fish salmon salmon roe but also with phospholipids same thing eggs egg yolks yeah and i learned this from lisa mosconi um neuroscientist again she's i love her because she's looking at the brain and not just like guessing yes but she shared with me that in the egg yolk itself there's 10 000 milligrams of phospholipids per 100 gram of product it's the most power packed source of phospholipids okay

but then also she shared with me that dha and epa you're going to find far more in the fish eggs than in the fish itself caviar right caviar salmon roe yeah all right so it's not again this is not to say to go out and you know drop a a heavy buck on some caviar right and be like i don't know lifestyles of the rich and famous but okay for some people that might that might be the thing that's the phospholipids what's number two so epa dha so fatty fish salmon mackerel sardines Gotcha. We've got EPA, DHA is two. Right. And phospholipids too. I thought it was one. Okay. So DHA and EPA make phospholipids. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. We can also get them from our diet. Okay, cool. So, and I'll just rattle off a couple of other ones for the phospholipids because this is important. Like also for folks that are vegan,

we've got to include everybody. Yes. So from there, most of the peer reviewed studies are done using fish oil. Now that said, there's a little bit of controversy there, but I just want to make that clear that most of these studies are done using fish oil. So we can also from here, krill oil. So K-R-I-L-L, krill oil. That might be a viable option for folks that might be on that borderline with vegetarian. And it's a microscopic, keyword microscopic shrimp. This is what whales are consuming, for example, to create their massive brains. But the reason krill oil can be so remarkable is that it's high in astaxanthin, which helps protect the DHA and EPA and keep it from oxidizing. So it's really bioavailable.

And we have peer-reviewed evidence that it works. The step from there that's truly vegan is an algae oil. So at minimum, I want folks to get that, like today. Because again, if you're not getting in DHA and EPA, your brain is going to have accelerated shrinkage. Oh, man. All right. It is that important for the structural integrity of our brain.

Got it. When I was running my clinical practice, I knew how important omega-3s were. We just, we'll just say 15 years ago, 15 years ago. People are coming in, I'm getting everybody on chia seed oil, flax seed oil, hemp seed oil. I'm getting like, you gotta get these omega-3s in everybody. I was missing part of the story.

That is ALA. It's not DHA and EPA. The plant version does not. It's not the structural components of the brain. Okay. But it's so important. Your body can convert some ALA into EPA and DHA, but you can lose upwards of 90%, 95% of the conversion process.

Wow. So you're going to have to be shoveling chia seeds and hemp seeds all day to meet your needs, and it's just not viable. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So this is why algae oil is so important. So you're going to have to be shoveling chia seeds and hemp seeds all day to meet your needs. And it's just not viable. So this is why algae oil is so important. And of course, I love chia seeds and flax seeds, all this stuff. You can add that stuff in. But don't be mistaken that it's the same thing as DHA and EPA because it's not. So that's number one is the phospholipids.

And number two, I want to share with everybody is something called sphingolipids. How do you spell that? That's S-P-H-I-N-G-O lipids. Lipids got I-D-S. So it's the second fatty part of the brain. Second type of primary fats found in the human brain. Okay. So we've got phospholipids, sphingolipids.

Sphingolipids really function as building blocks for our cell membranes. Okay. So this is the membrane around all of our cells. And by the way, this isn't just for our brain. It's also our entire physiology. These are important, but primarily for the brain. Right. Especially for the brain.

Let me say that. So the cell membrane, if we go back to like biology class, which I hated, by the way, I was not passionate about science until I had to figure stuff out for myself. But we're taught that the nucleus is the brain of the cell. This is where all the intelligence is. But working with cell biologist Bruce Lipton, Dr. Bruce Lipton, who's like the person who really impressed epigenetics into popular culture. He shared with me very early on that in his lab, he was just doing he was removing the nucleus from cells and the cells just keep doing stuff. They keep operating. They do a lot of their same functions without their so-called brain. Right. So it's called enucleation. So if that's the brain of the cell why does the cell not die if I take your brain out you're dead that's it that's the end of Lewis's story you know what I mean so

it's not it's not as cut and dry this the membrane it's brain in the name a little bit but the membrane has a lot of intelligence and it's working and constantly assessing the environment and sending data to the rest of the body. I mean, the rest of the cell, all the internal mechanisms. So there's a lot of intelligence in that membrane. And that membrane, a big part of that is sphingolipids. Okay. So now here's where this plays out.

Sphingolipids can literally change the architecture of the cell, of the brain cell. So what that means and why that is so important is it can help, it can of the cell of the brain cell so what that means and why that is important is what it can help it can adjust the cell so that it can do things a different way and that's important like what if you need to what if you have an injury how does your brain come back your brain can find another way it can adjust because of sphingolipids are a big component of helping to adjust the architecture for the brain cells to still do processes all right so that's sphingolipids the other big role that they play is in actually cancer prevention because they're regulating cell replication so cells are supposed to replicate to the hayflick limit is kind of one of the

the ways that we look at it but But cancer cells go replicating indefinitely. So sphingolipids help to regulate and check cell growth. And in particular, we're talking about in the brain. So thank you, sphingolipids, for that. There you go. Okay. All right. So that's the second type.

But sphingolipids also help to make, oh, dietary sources. Eggs, butter, yogurt. Eggs again, man. eggs are there again, cream, beef, funny enough, rice and sweet potatoes as well have some interesting amounts of sphingolipids. All right. So those are a few sources dietarily. But sphingolipids are used to make something called sphingomyelin. Now, this is going to be important for you as an athlete, what we're about to talk about now. So sphingomyelin, so myelin is the protective sheath around our nerve transmissions. that means is as we do a behavior right so the first time that you throw the handball right there's a certain way that you did that and over time you got better and better and became more automatic where you can do it from all these crazy angles you could do it diving you could do it behind your you know between your legs and all the the flossy stuff that you do but the thing is

over time more as you're doing the thing more and more myelin is getting laid down over that nerve transmission, basically insulating it and making it fire faster. All right. So this is how Steph Curry, for example, the first time he's shooting a basketball versus what he can do today, he's laid down more myelin where the nerve transmission is automatic. And he can do it from all these different anytime, anywhere. Right. So same thing with swinging a golf club. It's not practice makes perfect. It's practice makes permanent.

All right. So the more you're doing this thing, you're laying down more myelin. All right. So it's really, really important for everything, not just for athletic performance, but everything that we do. Sure. Sphingo lipids help to make sphingomyelin, but myelin is combined. The sphingomyelin works with the other, the third type of fat that the brain is primarily

made of, which is cholesterol. Wow. Right? So cholesterol is the third one. Okay. And this is another. Of the brain. Yes.

It's another dirty word apparently in nutrition. Unfortunately, because things have become so black and white. But cholesterol is so important for the brain that the brain actually makes it itself. The brain is the most concentrated area of cholesterol of anywhere else in our body. About 20% of our cholesterol is located in our brain. It's just making it on demand because it's so important. And cholesterol is actually, if we, for me, I'm like, well, how the hell does the brain do it? If it's making its own cholesterol, how does it do it? It's the astrocytes i briefly mentioned them earlier they're these star-shaped uh glial cells and the they can be connected to

like two million different synapses for different uh different neurons and just they're making some magical stuff happen but anyways with these astrocytes are they're one of the places that we are that we believe are primarily making cholesterol for the brain because it's so important. And so obviously building blocks of cholesterol, we can get from our food, but as I mentioned, your brain is primarily making it itself. Why does this matter? Last piece is cholesterol is a big component is primarily working with your myelin. And if you're not, this is also seen in like MS, for example, there's issues there with the myelin sheath, right? So this can lead to different health issues,

but also it can improve our performance when we have the building blocks to make these compounds. So I know this was a lot, but just understanding these different three types of fats, how important they are for making up our brain, our brain is made of this stuff. We got to get out of the politics about which food is better than other, what dietary framework, and just look at what have humans been doing the longest? What does our brain require? What are the foundational elements for that? And just focus on what's best for us. Experiment, have fun, share, teach, have a good time, and let's get our families healthier. Oh, man.

A lot of information here. And you have even more in your book, Eat Smarter. Use the power of food to reboot your metabolism, upgrade your brain, and transform your life. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this. There's more in stock now. We, as a community, everyone sold out on them quickly. You bought them, So you got to make sure you guys buy a couple more of these. If you want recipes, if you want the research,

the science, everything. If you want to learn the guacamole that I had and enjoyed for the first time in my life, it's in here. It's amazing. Lots of good stuff in here. So thank you for putting this. You have to give me some of these notes that I can put in the description on YouTube as well. So people have the kind of the footnotes for all this stuff. So I have a lot more questions, but I think this is a lot to digest for people. So we'll leave you guys with this, unless there's anything else you wanted to add here

for this interview. I mean, the big thing for me is, you know, I'm so grateful for you, man. Like if people who haven't had the chance to actually hang out with you and to, you know, to eat guacamole together. Like you are the real deal, man. Thanks, brother.

You're such a great human being, you know, with the biggest heart. And the thing that I admire most about you is that, you know, you're passionate about learning and connecting. You are the most incredible connector of humans that I've ever met as well. Thanks, man. So many great people in my life because of you. met as well. So many great people in my life because of you. And being here with you today, for me, it's just a big part of the mission that we both have, which is to get people feeling empowered right now when there's so much information that is disempowering and help to not just balance it out, but to create a tipping point to where we can really become healthier as a

culture where it's not the exception, It's the rule. And I believe that we can do that in our lifetime. It starts with us. The education is one thing, but it's finding a way to fall in love with it. Finding that thing that connects with you. It might be through food. That might be a bridge. It might be through dance. It might be through handball. It might be through sleep. Maybe you got a passion, like you found a passion for sleep, but we've got to find a bridge to get our citizens healthier because truly we, right now we're the sickest society in recent human history. And we're also with all of our advances, this should not be the case, you know, but what it really is, it's just creating the bridge for people to get educated, to feel empowered and to make this the norm. So I just

want to ask everybody to make sure that they, you know, to make this the norm. So I just want to ask everybody to make sure that they take something and apply it. We don't want to just be human filing cabinets. And also share what you learn with somebody else. Look out for somebody, give them a word of encouragement. We can use that more than ever today. Absolutely. And I think the greatest thing you can do is be the example for people around you by setting the example for yourself, how you show up, how you change your habits, how you change the way you think, the way you talk, the way you take care of your health, the food choices, the activities you take on. Doing that will inspire people around you to start asking questions. Hey, you look like your energy is different. You're more magnetic.

So start attracting people by your example. I think that's a great way. And make this the standard, not, you know, what is it? 60, 70% is obese right now. It's like, how do we, let's get that to 50% and then let's get it even more. That would be incredible if we could reverse this. Um, I guess this, what is this? What do you call this? An epidemic, multiple epidemics under one umbrella, chronic diseases, obesity, all the fear, all this stuff, right? It's just like, if we can reverse some of these things. We're so much better than this.

We are. We're so much bigger than this. We are. But we have to realize it. Is it just laziness, you think? I feel like we know, eat better. Like, don't eat this, we should eat this, workout. I feel like people understand that.

Is it dealing with laziness? Is it just- Isn't that word is very,- Isn't that word is very inflammatory. Even that word is inflammatory. Because absolutely it can be a component. But where does this come from? You know, it's the low energy from the way that we eat. It's the low energy from the lack of movement.

It's the low energy from the messages we're taking in. You know, there's so much right now that is unfortunately designed to keep us in that low energy state. You know, people know about, you know, there's been big right now that is unfortunately designed to keep us in that low energy state. People know about this, there's been big movements now towards having a better relationship with social media. There's films like The Social Dilemma, for example, and demonstrating how people are behind the scenes working to control you and keep you distracted from being your greatest self.

It's crazy. We can't just say it's this one small thing. It's really a societal issue. And we have to, it still goes back to empowerment because people, we tend to think that we are making the decision about being on our phone, for example, all day, you know? But in reality, there are forces that are working

to keep you separate from your clients. There are some influences for sure. So you gotta protect your mind, protect your habits and everything. Make sure you guys get a copy of this. Get a few copies. Give it to some friends. Spread the message of health, wellness, all the good stuff.

Eat smarter. Sean, you shared your three truths in the previous episode. So if you guys want to see Sean's three truths, check it out there. But your final, before I ask your definition of greatness, I want to acknowledge you for constantly showing up, man. You're one of the most dedicated researchers I know in this space, constantly obsessing over the research, the science, finding the holes and the information out there, and then giving us the answers. So this thing is chalked with pages of cliff notes at the end with all the research as well,

citations and everything. So make sure you guys check this out. Again, appreciate you for always showing up, man. And being a representation of the way your background, the way you look, your attitude, and how you can kind of attract more people to this information as well. So appreciate you. My final question, what's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is just going off of what you just said. Being the model. Being the example.

The greatest example that you can give or the greatest way to teach is being it. Absolutely. You know, because when you walk into a room, you are a demonstration. You change that energy in the room that you walk in, as we talked about earlier with that tube Taurus. You know, so being the model

and you can help to uplift and bring a light into dark places, you know. And also, as we grow ourselves, we become less influenced by the negativity around us as well. I know you've noticed that in your evolution too, you know, so you can really become impermeable to a lot of the craziness that's going on. So really work on yourself, build yourself up, become the best version of you and let that speak and speak volumes of you before you even step on the scene. So that's for me, that's the definition of greatness is being the model, being the example,

and also accepting that you don't have to be perfect in being that example. Just be in process. Just be working towards getting better because there's always going to be somebody who is at a more trying place than you are right now. So just being that example, because just one person, if you're just five steps ahead of somebody with your health, you can help and reach a hand back and lift that person up. That's it, my man. Make sure you guys get the book, check out the Model Health Show, YouTube, podcast, social media, whatever, link up below. Sean, my man, appreciate you, bro. Thanks, man. Love you, bro.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Again, if you enjoyed it, please spread the message of greatness to a few friends. Just text a few friends right now this link, lewishouse.com slash 1141, or copy and paste the link on the podcast platform that you are listening to and get the word out there so we can help more people improve the quality of their life. If this is your first time here, please click the subscribe button right now so we can help more people improve the quality of their life. If this is your first time here, please click the subscribe button right now so you can stay up to date and notified from some of the biggest interviews

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or wherever you listen to podcasts as well. And I want to leave you with this quote from Tony Robbins, who said, the higher your energy level, the more efficient your body. The more efficient your body, the better you feel, and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results. If you're listening and you're subscribed to this show and you want to learn how to achieve greatness, you want to produce more outstanding results in your life and whatever that looks like for you. And that's what this is all about. Optimizing your health first so you can have more energy,

more focus, more clarity, less distractions, less stress, less anxiety, and really have an optimal life. And that's what we're all here to do is have that joy, that fulfillment, that love that we all seek to have on a consistent basis. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are so loved, you are worthy and you matter. And I'm grateful for you for being here today. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.