Well with Arielle Lorre - 1: ROB YANG - Gut Health, Hormones, and Bad Sushi

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

In this episode, Arielle talks to fitness and nutrition expert Robert Yang about topics ranging from gut health and hormones, to stress, to stool tests and why sushi might not be so great for us after all. Rob gives practical guidance that listeners can apply to their lifestyles to begin to overcome their own functional disturbances. Robert Yang has a master's degree in human nutrition and is a certified nutritionist.  He is a strength and conditioning specialist, a CHEK Level 4 practitioner and an advisory board member with the Titleist Performance Institute.  He specializes in nutrition, sports performance and lifestyle coaching. His integrative and individualized programs have helped athletes and individuals improve performance, prevent injuries, and improve health and vitality.  Find out more about Rob Yang here:  http://www.robertyang.net/ For Arielle's cookbook go here: https://theblondefiles.com/the-blonde-files-cookbook/ Follow Arielle here on here Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/ariellelorre/ And catch up with Arielle here on YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Go to your rise-adviseur or SunnyCars. combe. You're listening to Over-the-Influence. I'm your host, Ariel Lorry. I'll be talking to movers and shakers in the world of wellness and beyond,

and people who have had their own interesting journey, whether it be physical, mental, spiritual, or professional. Thanks for joining. Let's get into it. Happy Wednesday, or whatever day it is that you're listening to this episode. I guess it could be any day of the week, so happy that day. Disregard. Today I'm talking to Rob Yang, who is my nutritionist, and if you follow me on Instagram, you might know that Rob and I have been on a gut healing mission for the past almost year and a half, and it's night and day from when we started. I think back or look back on old photos from before he and I started. working together and it's really shocking to me now to see the extreme bloating and to remember

the really acute digestive issues that I was suffering from because that was my norm back then so it didn't really phase me but now that I don't really experience that anymore I have a little perspective and I'm just so grateful for Rob's guidance. So I'm excited to share him with you. He's so knowledgeable and there's so much ground to cover. I think I need to have him back periodically to the podcast and pick a topic and delve really deep, but we definitely covered a lot in this interview as well. So just a technical note, Rob and I recorded this episode back in January when I had no clue what I was doing. I still kind of don't, but I'm winging it. But I didn't have the software back then that I have now, so the sound quality is a little bit different. And you

might hear Harvey in the background. So just wanted to put that out there. So a little bit about Rob. He has a master's in human nutrition and is a certified nutritionist. He is a strength and conditioning specialist, a Czech level four practitioner, and an advisory board member with the Titleist Performance Institute. He specializes in nutrition, sports performance, and lifestyle coaching. His integrative and individualized programs have helped athletes and individuals improve performance, prevent injuries, and improve health and vitality. Okay, so welcome Rob Yang to the podcast.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Of course. It's only natural that I would have you as my first guest because we've been working together for over a year now and you've just been so immensely helpful to me on my personal journey. So I'm really happy to get to share you with everybody. Great.

I'm excited to share and try to help people as much as they can. Yeah. So why don't you just give everyone a quick intro about your background and how you got into the field that you're in now? Sure. So my background, in high school, I was involved in a lot of different sports. So just for personal gain, I was always interested in trying to increase my performance for sports and getting stronger for powerlifting.

and then eventually bodybuilding and all these different sports. And so the nutrition side of it was always intriguing. And so I was always trying to learn something. And so I mean, at the period of time, the only education were magazines. And then as I went to school, I wanted to study nutrition. And so once I graduated from school, I got my license to be a nutritionist.

And at the time, I was still personal training people and I got my, let's what we call CSCS, a certified strength and conditioning specialist. So I was working in that capacity on both sides. I tell people it depends on kind of what hat I'm wearing. Sometimes I'm wearing the strength coach hat and sometimes I'm, you know, wearing just a nutrition hat. And so it just evolved and changed.

And so as I wanted to become more educated after going to university, that's where I was really just fascinated with functional medicine. And so people will say it's alternate to medicine or whatever that is, but basically looking at how each system of the body is so interactive with each other and looking at digestion and how that impacts your hormones and how your hormones can affect, obviously, you know, other parts of your physiology and the detox pathways. And so I just continued to educate myself in that capacity. And so right now my practice, sometimes I'm wearing the strength coach hat.

Sometimes I'm wearing the nutrition hat. And then the other times I'm wearing both hats, depending on who I'm working with. So for me, you know, as a practitioner, it's always interesting. I always work with a lot of different types of people, athletes, people with a lot of issues. And so for me, that's exciting. and I'm always learning on a daily basis. It's always interesting to me when a more natural, holistic approach to our health, so functional medicine or integrative medicine is deemed alternative.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it just seems like that should be our primary modality of treatment rather than like maybe a more westernized approach where often we just are treating symptoms with drugs and don't get me wrong my dad's a doctor i believe in western medicine everything has a time and a place i just maybe i'm just cynical from my own experiences but I guess I wish that a more holistic approach was the norm. You know, I think as with any industry, you know, you get focused on a pathway. And so it's nothing wrong with it in terms of the medical community. But, you know, there's a specialist for every single thing, you know, from, you know,

hormonal endocrinologist to immunologists and all these, you know, gastroenterologists, where, you know, the gastrointestinal tract affects the new system and affects the hormones. So you can't separate those, especially when we're talking about a lot of the chronic problems that people are seeing these days and experiencing in this day and age. Yeah, it's all interconnected. I definitely want to talk about that, but I'm curious, since you were in this field before it was more mainstream, like it is now. What was the health and especially the nutrition component? What was that like then? Because we see, you know, always there are different trends and diets and I'm curious what it was like when

you first got into the business. Yeah, I think with, I think I always say that the nutritional field is kind of like fashion. So it goes in cycles, you know? Right. And everything comes back eventually. Yeah, everything comes back. I think, you know, like bill bombs will come back or, you know, overall. Oh, yeah. They're back. Yeah. You know, so, and I think that's so true with nutrition as well, because right now, you know, if you, you know, I think that probably the most often searched or Googled diet is the keto diet, right? And so, you know, I mean, I played around with the keto diet, you know in the early 90s. Wow.

And you know, and even then it was, you know, it's been around for years before that. So, you know, it definitely, obviously back in those days, usually, I mean, from my perspective, because I was more trying to increase performance or lose body fat or gain muscle. At that period of time, it was, you know, more towards the aesthetics. But, you know, for me and my sort of journey. working with people, I realized that a lot of people were having the same issue. You know, they were constipated and they were having diarrhea and they didn't know what to do or, you know, they were having problems sleeping or they were just fatigued all the time. Like they just couldn't get out of bed and

they forced themselves to get out of bed and then, okay, have my coffee and then I feel kind of normal and then to be able to, you know, go try to function through the day. You know, it's interesting because it sounds like you were dealing with what is now kind of the hot topic, which is gut health, right? And digestive issues back then. But I don't know. Maybe it's just from my perspective, but it seems like gut issues are a lot more prevalent now, maybe than they were then, or maybe people just weren't talking about it.

Yeah, I think, you know, part of it could be the fact that, you know, there's, people are testing more for it. You know, so they're going to their doctor saying, you know, I have these issues going on. So they're getting an endoscopy or, you know, they're getting more tests done. So that could be part of it that they're and they're researching it more. So that's happening. But I think, you know, as we go along and things are changing within, you know, lifestyles and what people are eating and everything else, I think there's definitely, I think people are definitely more aware of it.

They're realizing that, okay, this should not be normal physiological function. It's really common, but it shouldn't be normal in someone's life. So I think it's a little bit of both. For people who don't know, why is gut health so important to our overall well-being? Well, I think a Russian pathologist said it best, Eli Mechnikov, And he said, death begins in the colon. I've heard that before, actually. Yeah.

So I always, I've never forgotten that once I heard that, I was like, whoa, okay. That's a bold statement. Very bold statement. And that was made a long time ago. And I think it definitely has a hand in everything in terms of the function of a body. Like I said before, you know, hormones. your, you know, like, for example, 20% of your thyroid hormone is made in your gut. You know, estrogen levels can be dramatically affected by your gut health.

So I think, you know, from, you know, for big picture perspective, if you look long-term, you know, you have to look at gut health impacting, you know, your quality of life. And then obviously your life expectancy as well. And so I think, you know, we have to look at it from a big picture perspective, but also short-term perspective. You know, and obviously short-term perspective, people are complaining of immediate gas and bloating and, you know, they're having diarrhea more than usual, that kind of stuff. But then, you know, from the bigger perspective, you know, you do have to look at, you know, bigger diseases that people could possibly get cancer, obviously. You know, one of the things they notice is with Parkinson's patients, a lot of high correlation with constipation and Parkinson's, like a lot of people are consipated, you know. So now the research is starting to gear towards that, okay, well, how does that impact the brain?

And now we know, well, you know, the gut affects the brain. There's a gut-brain connection. Such an important topic and probably one that deserves its own episode. But you mentioned hormones. Can you talk a little bit about why they're so important? And what do you even mean when you say hormones? I know probably for a lot of people, certainly for me up until a couple of years ago, I only thought of hormones in terms of like reproductive hormones. Right.

And most people think, oh, you're being hormonal and, you know, they always joke around and say, oh, it's like you're having your mental cycle, whichever. Right. People think of it in the context of like a period or maybe testosterone or something and that's it. Yeah, exactly. And we're not excluding males. I don't want to leave the boys out of there. You know, like nowadays, obviously it's like, you know, it's PMS, menopause, perimenopause. But for men, you know, you go on any sort of sports talk radio show or whatever, a commercial is, every other commercial is like low T clinic, low T clinic. Right. Get your testosterone check, right?

Yeah. And so we only think of hormones in the sense of, okay, it's my, for female, it's my estrogen, progester, under my cycle, for male, it's testosterone or too much estrogen. But when we look at it, you know, in terms of more of a overall approach, then you have to look at the other parts of the hormones. So you have to look at the corosal levels of your adrenal glands and aldosterone and, you know, norophenephyne, epinephrine, because you can't just be very myopic and say, okay, well, your testosterone is low, so you have to take testosterone.

Or your estrogen is low, you have to take estrogen. You have to, and that's what I've always tried to do is ask the question of why. You know, why is your testosterone level low or why is your estrogen level low? Why is your progester level low? And so oftentimes we need to factor those into someone's program and figure, okay, why are they low? Because oftentimes if you just give that person the pill or you give them, you know, shots of testosterone for a male, they might feel better for the short term, but long term, they either feel worse or they get other symptoms because of the lack of, I guess, or just basically kind of creating a band-aid approach to the issue rather than getting to the root cause of the problem. What are your thoughts on synthetic hormones?

Obviously, if you look at it could be more of a, I guess, you could say the medical approach in terms of medication, right? So taking, you know, exogenous estrogen or you could, it's sort of kind of like a gray area when you start to say, okay, we're going to do biodentical hormones. So now we're taking natural the exact estrogen progester that, you know, is bi-identical to the body's estrogen progesterone. And then so, you know, you have that sort of spectrum there. And so in regards to, you know, even if it's the safer way, like the biodendical hormone, that's, you know, what's touted in even the functional medicine route. From my experience, I would tend to err on a side of caution with that. And the reason being is that, yes, you might get an immediate effect. And so someone feels better when you introduce it.

But again, it comes back to why is it low? Like, why are the levels dysfunctional? And so that's where you need to do some investigative work. And that's, for me, that's my job is, okay, well, why is it low? and you can't just look at labs. Like I'm a big proponent of looking at labs because, you know, if you're not assessing, you're guessing, you know, that was a famous line by mentor my Paul Schick long time ago.

So you do have to do some assessments and test, but you also need to look at other factors. So you have to look at lifestyle. You have to look at someone's stress level, sleep, obviously what they eat, what they exercise, because they're all encompassing. And so you do have to look at those factors. So that's why when I consult with someone that's new, it takes an hour for me to consult with them because I want to hear their history. I want to hear their medical background because there's lots of little nuggets in there that they tell me to go, okay, that's completely

makes sense of why you're at the state of dysfunction at this period of time because of your history. Yeah, you took a really thorough history with me. It was like an hour. I was. not used to that. I was used to seeing somebody for five minutes and then getting blood work and being told that I was in the normal range. And as we know, being in the normal range on blood panels isn't necessarily a good thing. Normal doesn't indicate that you're healthy, necessarily, or thriving. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that, I mean, it does bring up a good point in terms of when you look at lab profiles, I mean, perfect example is if you look at someone's thyroid panel with thyroid-stimulating hormone, TSA, I mean, the values are so wide-ranging. And so someone could

technically in the normal range, but they're low normal, you know, and so that may be an issue, you know, vitamin D, 25 hydroxy vitamin D, that's another classic example, because the range is, I think, it's between 30 to 80 nanograms. per millilator and um you know if you're at 30 they're like oh you're normal right but you know that will be considered low normal and ideally you should be probably between 50 to 60 maybe 60 to 70 so yeah there's some interpretation in regards to some of those labs um but you know i think when you know you came to see me i think what what tends to happen is that um when when you know know, you, you're fairly young, you're a beautiful woman, you're not overweight. You don't look

like you're unhealthy, right? Like, you actually look very vital and healthy. So they look at you go, why are you here? Yeah. Like what, nothing could be wrong with you, you know? Yeah. And so, you know, I get a lot of people like this, especially in women, you know, they're fairly fit and they're trying to work out and they're doing like all the quote unquote right things but yet they're still having some of these imbalances and the doctors go like no you're you know something's wrong in your head or you're there's nothing wrong with you like we did the standard blood work or whatever you know and um there's nothing wrong with you but you know i i i'm not living in your body like you know your body best right and so but i'm just kind of i'm a guide i'm a i'm a coach to say hey you know these are the things that

I'm seeing from the outside looking in, and these are potential probably red flags that's probably contributing to whatever your complaint is. And so I think that's sort of the biggest gap that I see in regards to, especially some of the women that are seeking some of the help, is that, you know, they're looked upon as healthy. And it reminds me, I mean, I just a couple weeks ago, one of my clients said, yeah, I went to the GI doc, and he said, you need to have two. healthy, you need to go eat some junk food. Oh, my God. That was his sort of answer.

And I don't know why he gave an answer, but I thought, that doesn't really make sense. No, not at all. Yeah. And so, but I think that's sort of the gap. And that's where I'm trying to educate people and fill them up in that gap. And, you know, it can be really tough with digestive issues because there's so many factors involved. And it's not just food or it's not just. you know, you know, stress and all the other things, it could be all five of the things that

could be affecting your GI track. So sometimes it can be difficult to find that one, you know, root cause of the problem. And sometimes it's multifactorial. Oftentimes it's multifactorial. I get this question all the time on Instagram, and I'm sure you do too. But if somebody thinks that they're having issues with their gut or hormones or whatever it may be, they are feeling off. What is, maybe we should narrow it down to just digestion. What is the one thing that, how would you recommend they start trying to figure out what's going on? I think with digestion in terms of trying to figure out what's going on. I think the biggest thing is, what we could talk about is their stress load.

So I think that's the most difficult part of trying to help someone and work with them is that if I'm, if the particular client's not able to control their stress, then it's very, very difficult to try to get a handle on their digestive issues. Interesting. So, and, you know, let me clarify what I under like the umbrella of stress. So stress, we always think of mental, emotional, right? Like you're breaking up with your boyfriend or a girlfriend or you're getting a divorce, you're moving into a new house, you're moving to a new state, you know, that kind of stuff. But underneath that, we also have to consider the other components of stress. So it could be physical stress.

So, you know, the culture of fitness right now is that you need to go balls to the wall and you need to kill yourself and you need to, you know, count your macro. and you need to go low calorie and all those other things. Well, that in itself could be a massive stress to the system. Yes. Especially when you take an account that this particular person is, you know, in a job where they're working 78 hours a week. They're only sleeping five and a half, six hours a night,

maybe six half hours a night. And then they have, you know, the stress dynamics at work. So you know what I mean? Like it could be like physical, like too much exercise for someone. Right. could be they're not eating enough food. You know, they're eating good quality food, but they're not eating enough. So yeah, I mean, that was a really, like, tough question to answer because I say stress and I'm

giving you all these other factors. And so that's where I would say, you know, it's sort of a huge kind of loaded question. But saying that, you know, I would say from, let's say just like a food perspective, perspective, like make sure that, you know, the basic foundational stuff is, you know, drink half your body on this as a water day. Like, you have to do that. Like, there's no, if ands or butts around that, you've got to start doing that. Otherwise, you're just not giving the body what it needs on a daily basis. And that is, that in itself can be a stressor to the system. So you want to rule that out. And then, um, from a food perspective, you know,

just really try to control blood sugar. Because that's really one of the keys towards, um, de-stressing your system and allowing your system to handle stress. Because stress isn't bad. It's just if the stress is too much for your system, then it's a bad thing. And diets or certain lifestyle tools, I'll call them, like intermittent fasting, for one, can be major stressors to our systems too, and a lot of times we don't even realize it. Obviously, that's probably one of the other big, I guess diet trends or plans that are out there is to do intermittent fasting with IF.

And so I always tell people it's a tool, but you have to know how to use a tool properly. So you can't think of everything as a nail and you're just going to use a hammer. I mean, but that tends to be kind of the way it is sometimes. And so you have to definitely be careful with something like intermittent fasting, especially when in the context of someone that may have especially issues with energy as well as anxiety and depression, I find. That's probably not a good option because their blood sugar is probably unstable to begin with. And so when you get someone in that state and low cordial levels and their body doesn't just have the capacity to handle the lack of eating, basically, that people are going or putting themselves through.

And they get hangary. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing is that, you know, and I tell people all the time, like, I've done, you know, the first time I found intermittent fasting was 2010 from a colleague of mine, John Barardi. And I've been experimenting since then. And so you do have to be very, very careful. Because basically, if you're going to do intermittent fasting and you want to know, okay, am I okay with it or not, the one telltale sign is that if you have been eating from,

you know, 10 o'clock the night before till 12 or 1 the next day, pretty much you should just feel hungry and that's about it. And once you eat, you shouldn't feel hungry. But if you feel like your mood is all over the place, you feel hungry, you're starting to feel depressive thoughts, you're getting anxiety, that's a sign that your body can't handle it. Right. And so you definitely want to think twice about doing IF.

Yeah. When I tried it, I experienced all of that and I got really bloated, which was interesting, because I wasn't eating. Yeah, exactly. But it was probably the added stress. Yeah, absolutely. So another question that I get all the time, as I'm sure you do as well, is around supplementation. It seems like there are so many in the market now that are promised to do. do all these things and how effective can they be, when are they appropriate, how much of it

is supplementation, how much is lifestyle? What are your thoughts around that? Right. Yeah, I would, I mean, in my, obviously the topic of the Bicol and One Nutrition, the book I wrote this past, or 2018, which is amazing and everybody should get if they're not golfers. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. is obviously a lot of people have asked me, well, is this going to help me? And I said, well, the general principles well, it will help you. And the whole one nutrition food pyramid, nutrition pyramid is the bottom tier is hydration, middle tier is whole food, and the top tier is supplementation. So I really wanted to really keep it simple. And so, you know, the supplements

were only going to be as good as your foundation. So obviously your foundation is going to be hydration first and then the middle tier is going to be whole foods and then the top tier is going to be supplementation so in very rare cases i may go the other way around and and maybe use more supplements sometimes um but that's why i say you got to make sure you're you know drinking half your body ounces the day first and then the middle tier really try to make sure you get full food supplements as much as you can first. And then at the very top tier, then use the appropriate supplements. And for me, you know, I think appropriate supplements would be depending on what your goals are

or maybe some of your health issues. Like, for example, if someone's constipated all the time, then I'm going to usually look at one first water, make sure that's in there, make sure they're having enough probably fiber and form of vegetables from their whole food perspective. and in the top tier supplementation, then I'm going to be starting to look at, hey, you know, you have a lot of stress in your life. Every time you get stressed, you get depleted in magnesium.

So we're going to start to do a magnesium load test with you. And, you know, that's where we'd kind of go with someone with constipation. And to use that. And if that doesn't work, then I'll start to look at, okay, we may need to use some other herbs and things like that to help move the bowels. Yeah, when we're talking about supplementation in regards to your gut health and the GI track, I think one of the, probably the one, I guess one of the biggest myths is probiotics. Like if you have gut health issues, probiotics.

You use probiotics. And it's sort of a toss-up. It's almost 50-50, I find. Some people is like, oh, my gosh, that made, you know, world a difference. In the context of, let's say, someone who has a lot of blood. and it could be from bacteria, you know, sebo or it could be, well, let's just keep in a context of sebo. So bacteria overgrowth, then sometimes when you add probiotics into the mix, that's like adding gasoline to the fire. Right.

It will go, oh my gosh, my bloating's worse. I can't believe this. Like, probytes are supposed to help me. So. Yeah, that happened to me, actually, last winter, remember? Right. Yeah. So that's why we have to be careful of that. And so, you know, and the reason why I say it's complicated is just from experience because, you know, I run tons of tons of stool tests on clients. And so it's not just one thing that comes back, you know, as an overgrowth. Sometimes it's three bacteria, parasite, and candida. And you're going, holy cow, like, okay, so we're going to have to deal with his do a detox. You know, if it's just yeast or something, we're overgrowth, then it's a pretty simple thing to deal with.

But that's where it can be somewhat complicated. So, for example, let's say if it was just yeast and, you know, nothing else, then you could probably use a probiotic and be probably in a safe place and to do a, you know, digest a detox. But if someone has, you know, multiple bacteria overgrowth, then you have to be careful with a probiotic. So the bottom line is it's different for everybody and we should all assess individually what's going on in our own bodies. Like I just even recommend like just like you would go to the doctor for blood work once a year.

I think people should get, you know, a stool test once a year. Right. You know, like if you travel and you eat out, you know, people eat tons of sushi all the time. And I got to tell you, the first time I learned about all this functional. medicine stuff with parasites and everything else. I mean, the natural path, the doctor was like, you know, 100% of sushi has parasites. Wow. Yes, I didn't know that until a couple months ago when I started having some unpleasant digestive issues and I consulted with you about it and turns out, and I don't eat sushi very much anymore. I used to. But I had had sushi like two

weeks before and you put me on a regimen and I got better after a couple weeks. Yeah. So it's a tough one like with raw food and then, you know, sushi, sashimi's typically looked at as the healthy type of food, right? Right. And it's raw and everything like that. But I would err on the side of caution. And, you know, I still have it every once in a while.

But I, you know, like the trend these days are pokey bowls, right? So everybody's in pokey. Yes. But I stray away from that because I, you know, for maybe a month, I ate sushi every single weekend. And then sure enough, in the summertime, I'm like, why in the hell? I'm like, oh, my God, this is ridiculous. You know, like, I looked like I was like four months pregnant. I'm like, this is not normal.

Of course, I do a stool test and then I got a parasite. So I'm not going to need to do it at all for sure. Like, I'm definitely having things going on. So it's just sometimes it happens. So, yeah, I mean, it's good if you get tested. Yeah, you got to collect your poop and that kind of stuff. But it just takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. Like, you can try it.

So, you know, I'm sure 50% of the people that are listening, there are probably, well, I'm going to use a probiotic. And 50% you might get better and the other 15 might not or you might get worse. obviously the testing process is not the greatest and i think people are hesitant to spend money on testing and might see all of this as kind of frivolous and yes it's a it's a luxury to be able to afford this stuff but the alternative at least in my experience was spending money on supplements aimlessly, kind of like you were saying before, just guessing, throwing things at it, hoping something would stick and spending money on doctors and different specialists

and never getting to the root cause, which all of that in total far surpassed what, at least I have spent so far on some lab tests and some supplements. Yeah. And that, actually, that reminds you. So I know we talked about, okay, well, you know, talking about digestion and the gut and where, you know, if you have issues, what's actually one thing you could really do? And I talked about the whole stress thing. And it makes me think, actually one thing that you can do this, the day that you're listening to this podcast is be mindful when you eat. So what I mean by that is I think, you know, there's another way of saying is eat in peace. right? Like one of the things that I found that's very common in, you know, people that are, you know, it doesn't matter whether they're a CEO, whether they're just an entrepreneur or whatever they're doing, is that people are not taking a break to eat their food. So, you know, and I'm guilty of this. Like I like to read or, you know, watch something educational or something like that. But we have to realize is that the eyes, whenever you're, you're, you know,

reading or entering email or whichever. One, you're not paying attention to your food, right? So what is it happening is you don't chew your food enough. So if you don't chew your food enough, well, that's the process of digestion right there is chewing your food or even thinking about your food is the start of the digester process. So you have to make sure you chew your food. And the only way to do that is be conscious, be mindful when you're eating. And then the other part of it is, you know, if you're like the avid reader or, you know,

you're looking on the internet or whatever, the vision takes a lot of energy. And so what ends up happening is a lot of the blood is diverted from your digestive tract into your eyes. And so that's why it's really important that you, like you literally want to try to just sit there and, you know, enjoy a meal with your, your loved one and your family. Like we try to do family dairy every single night so we can catch up, talk, joke around, whatever. And so I think that's really, really important. So I think that's something that all the listeners can do, right away. And, you know, there's a, you know, I forgot I was going to say, but, but focusing on, you know, try, try eating without your phone and try to eat a meal in 20 minutes time. Because I'm

really fast eater. So I, yeah, to be really, you know, cognizant of, okay, like chew my food and do that. And the other thing you might want to try to do is try to drink, not drink, but eat a meal without drinking water. Yeah, I was actually going to ask you about that. A lot of people think, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to eat this meal and then I'm going to drink a ton of water to help my body digest it. But really, didn't it kind of break down the hydrochloric acid? Yeah, so it's a possibility that that could do it. But the other reason why I say that is because I'm really weird. Like my wife thinks I'm so weird, but sometimes we go on date night and then I'll be watching people as they eat because I'm really curious to see,

okay, they're going to take a huge bite of that steak or that whatever meat and they chew maybe six, seven, eight times and then they swallow. Right. And they're already putting food in their mouth again. And so what I notice is that people will drink water excessively because they're pushing the food down their esophagus. So that's why I'm saying is that each. If you tend to be that person that drinks a lot of water during a meal, try not drinking water during a meal.

And then you'll go, oh, my God, like, my food's getting stuck in my, in my throat. Like, I definitely need to chew my food more. So that's something that you can kind of try and experiment with. Well, I was, I was going to ask you as our closing question, what is one aspect of our lifestyle that's really critical for our overall well-being that people overlook. But maybe that's, maybe that's kind of your tip as being mindful when we're eating or I don't know if you have anything else you want to add. Yeah, I would say, yes, being very mindful of when you're eating, that would be basically the, I think the number one thing that we can do, like an action item

to take takeaway right away. And then I think, you know, in the grand scheme of thing, I think, and more research is coming out is about sleep. So, you know, with sleep, you want to make sure you're getting enough sleep over, you know, a week period of time. Obviously, you know, take about eight hours of sleep on night because just a simple study that they did with people is that just for three weeks, they deprive them of sleep. So what they did was like they have a basically like a baseline three week period where they would basically make these

people sleep eight hours a night. So they're getting plenty of sleep, eight to nine hours a night. And then for three weeks, they deprive them to sleep about five enough hours a night, which isn't too far off the map in terms of for people in terms of their sleep patterns sometimes. You know, they're not sleeping that much. And what they, showed in just three weeks they were all pre-diabetic. I mean, you're going, what? Like, pre-diabetic? And their blood work was normal before that. So I would say that would be one of the big things is, you know, people typically think of all, you sleep too much, you know, you're lazy, but really in the context of a lot of the different health issues and healing your gut and

healing your hormones, sleep is that overlooked factor in regards to getting yourself healthy. And quality sleep, right? Not taking Nambian and passing out. Exactly. And obviously, you know, that's, you know, yeah, that can be part of the factor involved in that. And you've got to do some investigative work in terms of why you need to do that. But yeah, if there's issues with sleep, and that definitely needs to be to worked on and then to figure out why you can't sleep. Yep. I think that's such a hard one, especially now because everybody is so busy and go, go, go. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Rob, for joining me. Hopefully I'll have you on again. So be on standby. We only kind of hit the tip of the iceberg. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, other things you can do or, you know, we need to talk about and answer some of other questions. But thank you so much for having me on.

Thank you. And thank you, listener, for tuning in and bearing with me as I find my footing here in this podcasting world. Again, apologies for the audio. I haven't figured out now, but my first few interviews are of different qualities because I was playing around with different software and microphones and all of that good stuff that I know nothing about. So it's a learning curve. But anyway, I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. And I will talk to you next week.