Episode 567: Shawn Stevenson: The Science of Sleep, Stress, Weight Loss, and Longevity

You're listening to "Havits and Hustle." Pressure it. - We have the wonderful Sean Stevenson on,

“and Brown, have a podcast, one part, B, does that make sense?”

- I love it. - We had some technical errors, round one, and we were gonna be doing a whole podcast on health, fitness, sleep, wellness, longevity. I mean, you are a wealth of information.

If you, for those of you who don't know, Sean has one on the top rated health podcast called "The Model Health Show." And now don't you have a deal with Spotify, or someone am I supposed to say that, or am I loud?

- I mean, you know, we're doing some stuff. - We're doing some stuff, okay.

But Sean is like amazing in terms of,

he's so researched, and if you have so many data points, it's unbelievable. So this is gonna be a very good podcast, I know. And what we do on this podcast, my dear friend, is we do these performance shots by Magic Mind.

Have you ever done one of these before? - Not like Magic Mind, Magic Mind. - Magic Mind. - Okay. - Yes, not Magic Mind. I wish every next time, I don't know.

But this one's caffeine free. - All right. - All right. I don't want you to do a little cheer. - Do a little dabble, and here we go. - Go, cheer is my dear.

Do you like it? - It's not bad. - And the immediate list is very, very, very good. It's all top of the line stuff. - I feel my mind growing, and...

- Your focus clearing.

- And also if it was Magic Mind, never mind.

- Okay, let's watch it. - I wish I knew what you're gonna say, but unfortunately, it's just Magic Mind today. But hopefully you're gonna be super locked in, and super focused now with this podcast.

Not like you really need it.

“I mean, how many books do you have now, by the way?”

- Three, three, yeah. - You three books, and the first book is a sleet book. It's a sleet smarter, yeah. So that was the International Best Seller. First, sleep well in this book

to become the International Best Seller. - Really? - It's translated in 26 or 27 different languages or countries, all separate foreign book deals. So that really, it changed everything.

And this would, it came out 11, about 11 or 12 years ago. - Wow. So it was before, like, sleep became the most trending, talked about wellness hack, basically. - Yeah, really.

- And also, you know, it was one of those things where, especially in the book industry, they're very big on proof of concept. - Yeah. - And so publishers weren't trying to really look at a book

like that agents. And so something I really had to advocate for. And I'm grateful. Now it's just like, again, the conversation is just a big part. It's built into the health conversation now.

And so I'm grateful for that, yeah.

“- What made you even think back then to write a book on sleep?”

- I mean, I was working as an nutritionist. I had just graduated. And I was still working in the gym as well as a strength and conditioning coach. But, you know, we were seeing incredible results with people,

you know, helping people to, you know, if they're on like, the centerpril and like, met for me, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, all this kind of stuff. Just helping to get their body to normalize

a lot of these functions, just through nutrition and exercise.

But there was always this percentage of people

who wouldn't get the same results. And that would really bother me. Ironically, sometimes they'll keep me up in night like, what is wrong? Why can't we get this person get the weight off

or get their blood pressure normal? - Right. - And so it just kind of hit me like a ton of bricks one day to ask people about their sleep. And I was shocked.

I was shocked. I mean, some people like, I was working with this guy from France. And he shared with me that he only spoke four hours a night for, and he said for years.

And when he said it, it was just like, I see it. I see it, there's part of, he kind of looked like a ghost, a little bit like the child. His spirit was a little bit like unsettling his body. And here's the thing.

I know that people won't change, but they don't want to change that much to get it. - That's right. - And so I started to look into what are some science-backed ways

that people can improve their sleep quality without changing a lot? And so I just, I was blown away by all the data that existed that most people had no idea about. And so even one of those studies

that was conducted by researchers at Appalachian State University, looking at the timing of day that you do your exercise in the impact that it has on sleep at night. And the researchers found that exercising in the morning,

so they had exercises to work out in the morning. This was 70M, one PM group and a 70M group. And morning exercises spent more time in anabolic stages of sleep. So like, Delta wave sleep,

they had lower blood pressure in the evening, and they had more efficient sleep cycles overall. And so not to say that the other times aren't like quote bad to exercise. Exercise is great just about any time,

but of course, working out in the evening and then trying to go to bed with your cortisol elevated

But it was just pointing to the way that we evolved for most people, just our genes are expecting us to be active in the morning. And what that did was one of the things that researchers found in other studies as well,

exercising in the morning helps to kind of set or reset or kind of sync up our cortisol rhythm. Our cortisol is supposed to spike in the morning, and then gradually go down through the day. And not to say that cortisol is like an antithesis

of melatonin, but if cortisol is elevated, it definitely does kind of have a suppressive effect on melatonin. And so for a lot of people, we would see, if we get a Dutch test done, or whatever,

just to be able to look at their cortisol rhythm through a 24 hour cycle, we would see, and call them tired and wired. And so they wake up in the morning tired,

“and then they would be wide awake in the evening, right?”

And I've been there, I understand. And so, you know, you wake up in the evening, like I can't wait to get to bed at night, but then night time rolls around is because their cortisol is elevated in the evening

in too low in the morning. And so, exercise is one of those things, which is, can he seems kind of obvious to help to get that cortisol rhythm reset? - And what happens is you see people,

what was the data on people who worked out, mid-morning or one PM? - Yeah.

- Was it still, it was better, but not great, basically.

- Yeah, I mean, exercise, again, and afternoon, beneficial, as far as influence on sleep, but not as much as the morning, in the evening, same thing, but there was some issue with, again, cortisol. And so, you know what's so funny?

Is that when I was writing the book, I had this book that my son was, who's 14 now, so he was like, two.

“And in the book, it was like a nighttime book, right?”

And I wrote a bed ritual book in the book. So it was like, the little characters, the little animals, like, they had their evening routine. Like, you know, taking a bath and, you know, having their little warm milk or whatever it was.

But then part of the book was, they exercise, right next to their bed, to basically tire themselves. - Yeah, yeah. - And this was a belief that people had, you know,

decades ago, that we should tire yourself out. When in reality, there's a big difference between towering yourself out and passing out, versus actually going through your sleep cycles efficiently. And so, you know, again, another great example,

I had a person I was working with who did BJJ, the Brazilian jujitsu, and their class was like an APM, and they were like, oh, struggling to get the bed at night. - Yeah. - And like, of course you are. - You know, you're leaving there at nine,

and you're just like, you just got done fighting basically.

And they're trying to get to bed at like, 10 30, you know, I'm just like, listen, either. And then this, sometimes just helping a great coach is somebody who just looks at your life from a different point of view.

And you can see like, okay, is there another time you could do your jujitsu training? Or don't be so hard in yourself to try to get to bed at 10 30. Like, it's okay to go to bed 11, 11, 30. If you're schedule, like, allows for you to get up at seven

the next day, like, okay, you don't have to. So sometimes it's just like moving stuff around to optimize sleep. - Do you back then, when you wrote that book, I believe Melatonin, taking Melatonin was a big thing.

And since then, it's now known that it's a horrible and whatever, and that people shouldn't be taking it, and they should be taking now magnesium.

“Do you remember that back then, was that?”

- Of course, yeah, I cited a study in the book, just to be clear, it has its applications that are appropriate. - Can you tell us what it is? 'Cause I mean, I feel like Melatonin now has become kind of like the devil, no one's right?

Like, it's only you take magnesium glycidate and then you want to fall asleep and not even the other types of magnesiums. Can you kind of give me some clarification on this? 'Cause I think there is a lot of confusion.

- Yeah, Melatonin, first of all, there's one of the most powerful hormones that we have. It's not just about sleep. That's really one of the biggest misconceptions. - Right.

- It is part of our overall, it is a master clock regulator, so it's a big part of our circadian timing system, right? And so what the hell is that? When I was in school, you know, again, my expensive university education,

hearing about something like a biological clock sounds like soft science. You weren't really, it was like something literally, like two pages in a textbook we move on. - Yeah.

- But in reality, it is quite possibly the most important thing

for us to focus on when trying to optimize what our body is doing, because these circadian clocks are determining when all of our other hormones and neurotransmitters, proteins are getting made, gene expression, these master clocks

are controlling everything about us, right? - Right. - And the question would be, for me, what the hell are they? What are these biological clocks or clock genes?

- I'm just looking at steps, so don't take it. - Sure, certainly. - These clock genes are existing and biological clocks are circadian clocks, exist in almost all of our trillions of cells.

There are certain cells that don't have them, but these cells are glorified genes and proteins. These clock, we'll call in, if you hear in the term biological clock or circadian clock, there are genes and proteins that control

all of our other genes and proteins, okay?

“Top tier importance, what is influencing these circadian clocks?”

Light exposure is the number one thing that's determining what these clocks are doing. And we can hypothetically break these clocks by having all of this abnormal exposure to artificial light at the wrong times

and lack of exposure to natural lights. We evolved thousands upon thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of years with these inputs, telling our bodies when to produce have a bigger boost of testosterone or human growth

hormone or estrogen or melatonin and suddenly all of this stuff is getting complete is chaos in our bodies. - Right. - And so melatonin is a master regulator of all these processes.

Most attributed to nighttime stuff, right?

- Melatonin is a very, very powerful controller

regulator of our immune system function as well. And so this is why we see higher rates, one of the reasons, higher rates of various cancers and shift workers, for example. And so there are multiple studies on this as well.

“And so melatonin is not just about sleep,”

it's about regulating our circadian timing system, which is influencing everything about us. Again, I could just list off 20 things. For immune system function, testosterone, estrogen, production, cortisol rhythms, all of it.

With that being said, should you just go to CVS and buy some of that shit off the shelf? - Yeah. - You gotta be very, very careful about that. - Because why, why is it dangerous? - So what the data showed in what I shared in the book was,

the prevailing belief was that taking an exogenous melatonin supplement with suppressure body's own production of melatonin. But that turned out to not be true. What the data showed was that you will still

continue to produce the same amount of melatonin, but your sensitivity to it goes down. The receptor sites for melatonin,

your natural receptor sites start to basically downregulate.

And so melatonin won't work as well in your body. - Right. - You keep producing it just fine, but it doesn't work as well. So there is an issue with that. - That's a big issue.

- Of course, for sure, for sure. So now we know what the kind of culprit might be and why people continue to, you know, end up taking more and more and more to get the same effect.

- And people are giving it to their children. - Yeah. - So get them to fall asleep. - People have been given their kids shit for a long time. - I know, it's because it's not new. - Yeah.

You know, whether it's like slip is an alcohol into the bottle of water, right? - Right, right, to get them to go to sleep. - Yeah. - Right. So this is not like, it's obviously not a safe.

Would you say that parents should maybe not

“give their children melatonin before they go to sleep?”

Ideally, no, we're just not appropriate, but we got to look at the culture. You know, what is the parents' habits around sleep? Look like, you know, a lot of times our sleep habits have to do with our environment

and our culture. And so which we'll get back, we could definitely dig in on this. But I want to make this point where I would possibly recommend, or I say it's okay for a melatonin use.

Small amounts, like micro amounts. Especially shift, like time's own changes, can help to kind of get you sync back up, get a little melatonin boost. I find it great for that.

If you've had a couple of rough nights of sleep in a row and just like, I just need to kind of reset. Maybe that's another case, but again, there are so many other things you want to do instead, but that's another place.

Or somebody's using like, again, a micro amount over a longer amount of time, that might be okay. We just don't want to get into higher doses, which is the vast majority. What it's recommended on the bottles or on the sprays

or the supplements are pretty significant doses of melatonin that, again, taking over a long period of time could cause some issues. So why can't people-- so because now I feel like it's all about taking magnesium at night.

So I feel like there has been a shift over the years. And it does magnesium work better, and why does it work better, for sleep? And again, another thing in my nutritional science class that I took in college, we were like the teacher,

the professor recommended everybody to take a multivitamin. If you work with people, tell them everybody to take a multivitamin. Right. What we didn't know at the time, and by the way,

my first semester actually moved into my dorm

in the summer of 1997, which is crazy.

I don't take college kid, by the way.

Thank you. Well, even today, though, this is rare that you're going to have a professor who tells you that vitamin C on that multivitamin. There are multiple forms of vitamin C.

You have one synthetic version of it in that supplement. Right. There are multiple forms of magnesium. I was not taught that. There are multiple forms.

Most people know multiple forms of vitamin D. Multiple forms of obviously the B vitamins. But just about any vitamin that you can name minerals, there are multiple forms of that thing. And so when we're getting this kind of isolated supplement,

it can be helpful. But some of it might not be what your body's actually looking for. And so obviously there are all these different types of magnesium. Now, I can't make a recommendation on which one is right, which one is right for you.

So of course, there's different companies that have like blends of different magnesium.

“But I think they can be incredibly valuable, by the way.”

But I lean towards, let's do what we can to get this in, magnesium in ways that we traditionally did through your diet. Right. So you're not going to be taking a supplement at all to try to fall asleep.

There are some, but there're going to be more time-tested. And there's, we can go in a stronger stuff.

We could do basically like chamomile.

Yeah, and you can tell me some stuff, because I know people love talking about sleep at a bite. But magnesium, by the way, I'm not trying to-- No, no, I want to know. We've got some data, some really strong data on magnesium.

And I'm a big wide guy. So magnesium supplementation before bed helps essentially to shift over to that parasympathetic nervous system and supports the production of melatonin. So it does have an impact, right?

And so, but you got to, it's context, like, if you're taking this supplement, but then you've got all the lights on and the TV

“and all this stuff, are you going to get that same effect?”

No, you're not. It's like, you've got to stack the conditions, right? And so, magnesium can be great for some people sometimes. That being said, I would love to see magnesium rich diet. I would love to see a trip to fan rich diet.

Trip to fan is another really important good sleep nutrient. Trip to fan is a precursor to make serotonin, which is a precursor to make melatonin. If your body, the raw materials to build this thing, but then get out of the way.

The conditions that you need for your body to make melatonin is a consistent schedule,

'cause it's always looking to produce stuff at the same time

and darkness, right? And so, again, if you're not abiding by those things, you could take all the supplements you want, you're not going to get the effect you're looking for. Right.

And the trip to fan isn't that in Turkey? That's a Turkey. It is in Turkey, but it doesn't make you sleepy like that. Yes, does it? We get tired on Thanksgiving 'cause we eat a shit of the food.

Exactly.

“That's what we call it, the itus, the little itus.”

But it's in chicken as well. It's in a lot of plant foods too, you know? So yeah, you could find trip to fan in a bunch of different sources, but this is just a lean back too. Okay, if we're looking at something supplement-wise,

quote, supplement-wise for supporting sleep. Chemomile, time-tested for relaxation, parasipathetic tone. We've got Kava Kava. If we want to get a little bit stronger, Kava Kava can really knock some people out as well.

It's traditional, been used for thousands of years, but my favorite, affirmed by data, biochemistry and pharmacology research. I believe that's the name of the journal. I know that it's a couple of parts of the name of the journal,

but they did a controlled study with Rishi mushroom. Oh, yeah. Rishi was found to improve sleep latency. Meaning you fall to sleep faster, increase overall sleep time, improve sleep efficiency, and improve energy the next day as well.

So Rishi is really remarkable, but the sourcing matters too. Are you getting the extraction method, right? Because you might be buying a supplement, and it's not even what the researchers used. What do you recommend that, what's a good--

So there's hot water extracts, and then there's alcohol extracts as well. It just depends on the purpose, because with the alcohol extraction, the hot water extraction is going to get different things out of the mushroom. Like, one method is going to get more of the hormonal compounds,

try terpenes. Another method is going to get the antioxidants and stuff like that. If you can, get both. And so this is why it's called a dual extraction. And so there are some companies out there that have both extraction methods in one T or one supplement.

And that Rishi can help you stay asleep, fall asleep, and have better quality sleep. Yeah, and no negative side effects. That was the biggest thing I want to point out about that study.

or even some supplements like melatonin,

we have these benefits with Rishi without negative side effects. And it's a monoregulating, and it's attributed to supporting longevity. It's been used for thousands of years. It's something I personally use a couple of times a week. I'll have a couple of Rishi, like 45 minutes before bed.

It's kind of like, yeah, especially, like, if I'm traveling. And if I'm wanting to get a reset, I'll have some Rishi tea before bed. And I'm going to blend it with a little bit of fat as well, just a little, because again, it kind of helps to bind with certain nutrients with the digestion. So maybe this is like some ghee, you know, really?

Yeah, just a little bit of ghee, maybe a little bit of some stevia or something, just to make it a little sweet, but yeah, but I mean, it's Earthy. Nobody said Rishi's delicious. Yeah, I know, but it works. Yeah, it does work.

Because I feel like if not so much for people and myself, it's not about falling asleep. It's about staying asleep.

“Do you have any recommendations for how people can actually stay asleep?”

Because that's the biggest problem I feel that's happening, especially in mid-alt middle-age. Yes. So number one, we have to move away from adding so much morality to you sleep through the night, like you're doing everything right. Right.

We have sufficient documentation of people, centuries ago,

waking up, basically having two sleeps, you know, waking up after a certain amount of hours,

maybe, you know, having a little snack, maybe having sex, maybe whatever the case might be, and then they go to sleep again. But this is the time again, we didn't have artificial lights. So you're not getting on your phone. It's still dark, and it's not safe to be out rummaging around.

So you get the rest of your sleep that your body might be looking for. So this doesn't have to be this black or white, like the reason that we might wake up, which we wake up, we act all of us wake up, but we're just unaware of it,

“because we're going through our sleep cycles, right?”

Going through the different state, quote, stages of sleep, right? And so there are times when we have very light sleep, where we're kind of out, we can wake up, maybe we move around, whatever, and then we just drift back into our sleep. But some people have more pronounced waking up when moving through those stages.

And today, unfortunately, we start doing shit, maybe we'll look at our phone, or we look at the clock, and we're like, oh, shit, I have two hours left, like, oh my, and we start dressing about it. And that is just, it's so unnecessary, because you are okay. If you just slept for, you know, five hours, and you still had two hours,

maybe your body is just ready to get up, and that's okay. But a big reason, if this is kind of chronic, and you are seeing the negative side effects, this, it has a lot to do with cortisol spikes. All right, so again, this rhythm, you might be getting, you know, some inappropriate release of certain hormones.

And then it's not all cortisol's not bad, by the way. But maybe it's just like you're getting a certain spike. And this could be based on when you're eating before bed. Maybe you ate something close to your bedtime, or maybe you didn't, maybe you ate too far away from your bedtime, and that's not appropriate for you.

Because, you know, now it's like, don't eat two hours for you go to bed, or three hours, or you know, three hours, it's the main thing people talk about. That's great for most people, actually.

“For some people, their blood sugar goes too low, right?”

While they're sleeping, and that can pull you'll get a adrenaline boost spike, and it can wake you up. And so, or again, it could be, for most people today, what it really blows down to, is we're creating disruption with our natural rhythms because of our devices. Yeah. You know, and so being on your screen right before bed, you know, watch what a television,

your phone, whatever, we know we need a little bit of time to help our, it's down right now. There are multiple studies on this now. When I shared this, almost 15 years ago, it was kind of like, what, like, yes, so we know that that's the case. If we do wake up, just don't get on your phone, like, you could do some breathing exercises, do some breath work. That phone, though, you're right. It's just, then there's no way you're going back to bed.

But why is it because we're doom scrolling and the blue light and all the things? Would you say fortifying, it's fortifying that interruption in your normal rhythm? Right. So if you're getting up and getting up again, you might take a couple of nights off and knock it on your phone and like struggle. Your body has to have time to get everything synced up again,

because our brains are always looking to automate, always. And so this is why it's so important to

have, you know, to try to do stuff around the same time to the best of our ability,

routines, they're over valuable for people who are out of sorts. Yeah. Right. Once you have some pretty good rhythms, it's okay. And this is a problem with the health community now, too. It's like, you can't stay up late. You know what I mean? If there's an event like, no, I gotta, and I know this because I've been that guy. But like, it's okay. If there's like

“this thing you got family in town, it's okay. Oh, I think I think everything we've taken”

things to such an extreme that nobody has fun anymore. Nobody has no one's a living life anymore. It's all about like you're tracking your wearables, tracking your blood glucose, tracking your sleep, tracking this, doing it like everything we're all walking around is robots and then we die. Right. Like, you know what I mean? It's just kind of crazy what's happening. Like, I mean, I was going to actually even ask you like, do you think these wearables are just making

us more obsessive or are they actually helping us at this point? That's a great question. Thank you for asking this because again, when it comes down to any of these things, it is so individual. It's a so situationally dependent. Part of my work, you know, in the health space, I've been as feel for about 23 years and when I first started, you know, speaking and, you know, my show, we just celebrated 13 plus years and over a thousand episodes, even prior to that. Thank you.

Prior to that, I was a face of another, I was like the resident nutritionist of another brand and being this kind of prominent person in the space, but like showing up how I am, I'm not wearing a lab coat, you know what I'm saying? I'm just being a cool person which really helped to connect with a lot of people and made them interested. And also, I mean, I can't even tell you how many physicians have been listening to the show for years influencing their patients and many of

them are actually like very prominent now in the health space, like they've changed their dark doctor, Darshan Shaw, Dr. Amy Shaw, I can go on and on and on. They've been listening to my show for years. Right. And so with that being said, and just this kind of opportunity that we had to kind of create this platform and showing up this way, I used published data as a way to kind of it's like inception, like to get past the veil of disbelief because there's cool

handsome guys, like, so we were never, so I'd be like, here's this amazing study that was conducted

by researchers at, you know, Harvard, who I probably know, but, you know, and I'll share the data

“and then we'll just talk common sense. I think that it's so important. It's so valuable to have”

objective hardcore data because there's so many different claims, there's so many different, you know, piece of advice, we want to have something that's affirmed by science. The problem is it's so I created that because I had to, I did that intentionally because I had to. Now people in business are doing it, people all over the health space, it's taken off like a rocket and a lot of content is created around data. I'm so grateful for that. This is way better than the

rig a moral craziness that it once was, but the problem is we swing too far to the other side of

the pendulum. Now it's just like, where's evidence? Is this evidence based? Where's evidence? What happens when we do that is we negate the value and the importance of N of 1, N of 1 experiments, this quote anecdotal data, something might work for you that has, it's not shown in any other study, it's not, this is not that, but it worked for you and that's okay, that matters. And that's actually how we can get more data on something. We can't just negate somebody getting

“something, if it or somebody being harmed by something, right, N of 1 is so important because,”

and all this is say, everything is not appropriate for everybody and some things are madly effective for people. When it comes to the wearables, this conversation, for certain people, it's a game changer. They gamified, gamified it. It's helped them to stick to their goals. They feel good about it. They don't feel a sense of stress around it. For others, they become more neurotic.

It's become a source of stress. They're always trying to optimize and elusing track of themselves.

They're losing track of what we've survived with and evolve with, which is paying attention to oneself, the data in the body that you live in, paying attention to how you look, how you feel, how you feel, just paying attention to how you actually feel, and how you perform, like how you actually moving through the world, like paying attention to these very basic data sets in lieu of, well, I'm not going to perform in my best because my fit bit of my whoop is telling me that like,

I only got a 66% sleep score and that's what's happening, right? The thing is, as I'm wearing my

away, like I did with my whoop and everything else, and I'm like, oh, it's here. I'm going to start

wearing it again, and I'm like, I thought I slept well, and then it says, oh, you didn't sleep well,

“it all, you had 66 and blah blah blah. The thing is, like, I think it just gives people,”

I think it gives me, personally, a little bit more anxiety, because I'm like, oh my god, maybe I did a sleep well, and it gives you all this more neurosis that was completely unnecessary. Like, what I remember before fitness and wellness became like a massive, you know, business, so to speak. I was like, I was like working out like 25 years ago doing this, like, I do the same boring shit every single day, and like, I'm not following the trends,

and I'm just fine, and I don't think that maybe you can, you can tell me it's all your data points. Are we healthier now when we're now following every data point and doing every single thing, red light, this, and not hyperbaric chamber, and like, are we healthier? Are we just more neurotic and stressed out? This is such a great question. You didn't know, you didn't even know, I didn't even know you was going to ask about this, but right now I'm

working with somebody who's published a lot of studies, and very prominent researcher, research scientist, and working on putting together like a pilot study on this, because the data doesn't exist yet. Yeah. And so this is something that I've been actually actively, because I see it, again, a great example of my wife. She loves, she loves tracking her data, she loves it, and she, but she's also very, she's a very light-hearted personality, to where it's not,

she's not good, right? So it's okay either way, but she likes to know it inspires her, right? And just so people are aware, they've said, the loop, or they send me to stuff in beta, they've, reaching out for me to be an early investor, like, I know all these guys that I could percent. Wholeheartedly get involved because, again, I know that there is this other side of the equation. All that to say, I don't want to rate on anybody's parade at all. If it is working for you,

“and you feel good about it, that's what matters most. And on the other side, you've got to be honest,”

like, if it's, if it's not good for your mental health, because, again, there's nothing worse for your sleep than creating anxiety about your sleep. Well, 100%, the other thing I noticed, and I just just, this is just my, like, pattern recognition or observation, is that the OGs, like, people like me or you who've been doing this stuff, you know, for whole life, basically, because we, like, it's embodied in us or DNA, we're not so much about all that. Like, every major athlete, by the way,

I've spoken to, like, the top and the best in the world. Like, I asked them questions, they're like, I don't know, I don't track it or I don't know. I'm not doing that or like, I don't know. I'm just, I eat okay. Like, they're not, like, as meticulous and crazy. What I think has happened is it's

because it's new and trending, and it's become such a multi-billion dollar industry, and people who are

newer to the game, they're using these, these little trinkets, so to speak, to kind of keep them in the game, or to keep them, or to get them in the game, and it kind of maintains the game

“for them for accountability. But when I think it's people who have, like, it's so embodied in them,”

it's not as, as useful or important. You know, like, there are people watching, they have their glucose monitor, they're taking their blood with the other thing that they have, they have the, or are they have the, what do you call it? The whoops, they have like, they look like Mr. T, they're walking around with the like, Mr. T, and I guess for them it makes sense, right? But, you know, I don't think, I don't think it necessarily makes you any healthier, or, or I think it's just

more, it brings on more psychological, like, psychological neurosis, personally. Newsflash, Mr. T did not stand for tech. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, but again, you know, the, some of my friends and colleagues, like, really, they, they were, you know, were balance, yeah. You know, like, I've been brought into, like, the, you know, the big biohacking conference to, you know, do a keynote, just because I'm bringing more grounded more grounded energy and science,

like, I don't give a shit if you are doing the, you know, like, redlighting your nuts act, if you're not even going for a 10-minute walk each day. Well, that's just, like, right, like, because you're majoring in the minors at that point. Exactly, you know, we're looking for these hacks. What are the things your genes expect you to do? Exactly. And once you do some of those things, it is, we need to guide ourselves back to ourselves. We're so externally focused today.

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What would you say is the number one most important wellness habit, though, to kind of keep you

“on point, and kind of, you know, for longevity? What would you say the number one?”

The data is clear and experientially it is beyond clear if we want to be honest about this. Yep, we're going ahead. The number one most influential factor on your longevity, on your health, is your relationships, and it's not even close. I'm a science guy. I love nutrition. I love exercise. I wrote the book on Sleep Wellness. All those things are massive, but nobody affects my Sleep

habits more than my wife and my kids. No one affects my exercise habits more than my wife and my

kids. No one affects what I eat more than my wife and my kids. And one of my valuable conversations, and it was really affirmation because in a recent project that I did,

“and it actually made my latest book and the East Marta family cookbook, I shared one of the”

largest studies ever conducted on longevity, and this was done by researchers at Brigham Young University and University of North Carolina, and this was a meta-analysis of 148 studies. Over 300,000 people, looking at what are the things that determine how long they're going to live? They look that, smoking, they look that exercise habits, they look that, you know, beating obesity, the number one thing that determined how long people were going to live was the quality of their relationships.

People who had strong social bonds had a 50% increase in longevity versus people who did not. Okay, set another way, people who have healthy relationships, have a 50% reduction in early death from all causes, all causes. All right, leading that into my conversation and being able to again support of lift the work of and to really dissect the data with Dr. Robert Waldinger. He is the director of the longest running longitudinal study on human longevity ever conducted out of Harvard,

out of Harvard, and it's been going on for over 80 years, he's the fourth director, and the reason that we resonate with each other so much is that I tend to be, I'm not going to say side-eyed, but I tend to be skeptical about stuff, you know, and but that also made me a good researcher, right, so he came into a skepticism when he was offered the position, he didn't believe just like your relationships, impact how long you're going to live more than anything else. So he actually

took it upon himself to really go through and check the data, decades worth the data.

“He went to other universities, he went to other research labs, like can you confirm this?”

And he was shocked, it's just like, yeah, it's just very, very clear. The number one thing that determines how long you're going to live is the quality of your relationships. And so with this being said, now we get into the conversations and I can ask the guy who has the most data, why? Why? Like it doesn't make sense. From the data, what he shared was the number one kind of factor that they're able to kind of pinpoint is the impact that our relationships

have on stress. And you're just like, well, again, now we have all this data affirming how stress is really fucking us up and a recent analysis was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and they affirmed that upwards of 80% of all physician visits today in the United States have a major stress related component up to 80% but our physicians are not talking about

is it? Yeah. And so we can maybe drive into that conversation in a moment, but for this particular

“researcher, Dr. Robert Waldinger, he shared with me that, yes, stress is making us wildly unhealthy,”

healthy social bonds are a very powerful way. The most powerful way to help us to metabolize stress

to process stress. And I don't ask why, like, what is it? He's just like, because I would think, like, oh, it's talking things out, right? It's cathartic, but it's not even that. He shared that it's this overarching feeling or the sense of knowing that somebody cares about you, that somebody has your back. That somebody's there for you at the end of the day, even if you had the most stressful day. Just that sense of knowing in this very uncertain universe, it's arguably the greatest gift.

And so keeping that in mind, I asked, what are the ingredients of a quote, "healthy relationship" or these strong social bonds? I was like, so does this mean, like, he, will just use romantic

relationships? Does this mean, like, you guys don't fight a lot? He was like, and I'm just kind of

“imitating, like, he's like, no, the people who we study, and we have them on film, we go and”

track these people down every year and take their blood work, and we have interviews on camera. People with the healthiest long-term relationships fought cats and dogs. And, you know, again, I'm just like, really, and he was like, but they have a bedrock of affection. They might like nitpick with each other and mess with each other, but they touch a lot. They look at each other, they see each other, they honor each other. And even though they might have conflicts, they know

that they are their person. Yeah. You know, they're there for them. They have their back. They might have their annoyances and their grievances and their bickering, but those are not the things that create a healthy relationship. And so I've been investigating for the last two years, like, what are those ingredients that do create a healthy relationship? And that's really where my mission is at, where my work is at, because, by the way, I've been shared this before. So, I've been shared this before

in an interview. Yeah. When I talked about our relationships impacting, because I just worked

out with my wife today, right? And it is one of the most powerful leverage points that we can use

for, because if we struggle to be consistent working out, this incredible study was published in the journal of sports medicine and physical fitness. And it tracked the exercise habits of people who worked out with their spouse, compared to people who worked out without their spouse, over the course of a one year study tracking these people. People who worked out without their spouse dropped out of their exercise plan 43% of the time. People who worked out with their spouse

only dropped out 6% of the time. Working out with their significant other led to them staying consistent with their exercise. It was six times more effective. All right. So again, it's this huge leverage point. And some people just like, well, I don't have our significant other. They're not into it, whatever. It's not just the significant other, though. And so this is what I haven't shared as well. So this was published in Health Behavior Research, looking at group exercise training

to boost exercise compliance and consistency. They found that people who were signed up and engaged in group exercise were up to 97% more compliant and consistent in exercise over the course of an 11 week study. And that's like otherworldly 97% showing up and compliant. And many people have experienced this, you know, the crossfit movement, for example, or, you know, just their group exercise that they just have to go, whether it's the people there, the teacher, the energy in the room,

just not being alone and doing stuff together with a group. That's how we evolve. Yes. And so it's an epigenetic influence to utilize. So again, it's these relationships. And I can do this for sleep. I could do this for exercise. Again, I could do this for our nutrition. Of course, that's really where my with the East Marta family cookbook was was really devoted to was the impact that our

“relationships have on our nutrition. And it's crazy. 100%. Well, that's why also lifestyle is so important.”

I feel like that's why when you're looking for someone as spouse and someone, it's good to all these things that make the most, the biggest dent is find someone who you're like, might who wants to do these things with you for all these reasons that we're just talked about. Right. That will be your biggest lever point. I think in staying healthy, happy, and also like living the longest. What do you think about, and then actually, let me ask you

this question, because you've been doing this for so long. What would you say when, like, is the most

loss? Would it be, what would it be the most popular area? Yes, it's fat loss. That loss, right?

“Yeah. Still, it was that always the way, I think that is how we say the same, right? That's”

a concern for most people if they're being being honest, right? Because people work out, you can say you're doing it for your health in a long javan, which I think is true to some of the, you know, some degree, but the biggest right, like the biggest driving force is vanity. When did you say? Yeah, I mean, again, it's not bad thing. It's, it's, it's the framing. I know, I mean, thought, and like, all these ripple effects happen from it. Nobody's waking up like,

I want to look terrible, though, you know what I mean? And so that, I find that to be an inroads.

A hundred, it's a gateway drug. It's a gateway drug. It's a gateway drug. It's a superficial thing,

but also our physical, our outer appearance, so much of our, our outer world is created by our, by our inner world, right? And so, but there are people who are superficially attractive or look

“fit who are wildly unhealthy, right? And I, I definitely fell into that camp when I was like,”

in college for sure, I looked very fit, but I was not healthy. And also again, that's, that's a great inroads, but the things that we're talking about are actually the way to get there, like sleep, for example. I mean, again, this was, this was one of the biggest leverages that I used to get the message across. Part of the reason a sleep wellness book hadn't done well previously was that

it was lacking sexiness to be, to be a thousand, like I made it sexy, specifically by connected

it to fat loss. Yes, so, more scientists at the University of Chicago put people into, it was a word study, so they're actually like in word conditions, controlled conditions, where they're not leaving to go to McDonald's or they're actually in this kind of clinical setting, living there. And looking at the impact that their sleep habits had on fat loss. And so, and this is a crossover study. So, not only is this like a controlled trial,

they're having test subjects that go through both conditions. One condition being the sleep condition where they're getting adequate sleep. In this case, they got to sleep for eight and a half hours, and then there was a sleep deprivation condition where they sleep deprived them. Now they're only getting five and a half hours of sleep at night after compiling all that and by the way, same exact diet, they're eating the same amount of calories, same macro nutrients, all that

stuff. The only difference is one phase of the study, they sleep deprived them. In this study, after compiling all of the data, when people were well rested, getting adequate sleep, they lost 55% more body fat. Wow. Okay. And again, I want to stress is body fat, not weight, 55, because the weight actually, they lost pretty similar amount of weight in the different conditions, because they were on a calorie restricted diet. You can lose weight, yes. Where's that weight coming from?

And so, when they were sleep deprived, their body shifted. There was like a metabolic shift to using more of their muscle mass, burning it off in this weight loss process. Wow. So,

“their body composition changed. Yes. Yes. That's how powerful our sleep is, because that sleep”

deprivation, this can be a signal for many things. One of the things that's signaling is A is F threat. It is a threat. It's a threat to our survival. My human is sleep depriving themselves because there must be danger around. That's true. And we want to keep this fat. We can live off this fat. This muscle mass is burning off too many calories. We need to slow our metabolism down, because there's obviously a threat around. We're not sleeping enough. And we can slow burn this body fat.

We're going to work to keep that on. Right? That's crazy. That's a big amount. That is not, that's no joke. Well, I know also your appetite for me. If I'm not sleeping, I will eat double the calories, because I'm just so much hungry or my inhibitions go down, both probably. Right? So, we have the kind of black and white weight loss numbers. But then we also have data on there's a major shift with left in when we are sleep deprived. Higher,

greater increase in gorilla, which is our kind of our glorified hunger hormone. We have many that drive us to eat. We have many that work to kind of quench that appetite, by the way, you know, GLP1 is something we naturally produce, leptin, CCK, adipinectin. It isn't just as one, because when I was in school, we did have leptin grow it. Yeah. That was just, right. Just these two. But we know that sleep, our sleep quality impacts all that stuff. You just said a word though.

That was a big part of the sleep wellness conversation that I was very passionate about ushering

in and changing, because even today, like I just had a conversation with somebody a couple of days ago,

“and they're like, so do you get like, you get eight hours of sleep though, right? 7 to 8, right?”

I'm just like, let's pump your brakes. It's okay. It's like, it's not about that. Like, the quality of the sleep that you're getting. You can be in bed or even passed out for eight hours, but wake up feeling like shit and like have low energy. It's the quality of those sleep minutes, and I like in it to calories, right? The calories, all calories are not the same. The quality of those calories do make a difference. That's such a good point. That's a great analogy

because well, I got a couple of questions on that. First of all, just to finish the sleep part,

because I just want to finish it, is there a amount that people should ammount of REM sleep, people get deep sleep? Like, is there like, if you're sleeping a six hour window, should they be getting an hour? Like, what's normal? What's a normal amount of REM sleep to have? After doing this work this long, yeah, there is no such thing. Yeah, there's, it depends. It depends on you. It depends on your needs. Okay, fair. If you are training for a final exam,

versus training for marathon versus just stress with kids versus like the amount of time that you're going to, your body knows what to do, and it's going to be different. It can be different from

“night tonight. Of course, you're going to be patterns, but there isn't any black or white. You should”

be getting 20%, this 40%, that it's just, it's not like that. Okay, so then if that's the case, if it's more like quality of sleep, you're saying something about, or the main thing is efficiency. Efficiency. What I was going to say is, you gave the analogy of like calories in calories. So there's, that's still a huge argument though, right? There's like, literally half the people say calories in like versus calories out in this another group that says, no, it's the quality of the calories.

You're obviously saying it's about, it's not about the calories in calories out. Like, if I were to have 500 calories of like a Mars bar, I'm just making it on French fries. It's not the same of having a chicken breast, and I don't know. I can share, I can share 10 different things. I want you to, because I think this is, this is, people still talk about this. Yes,

“here's the thing. It's usually coming from people who are, who found success with managing their”

calories. It's usually coming from people who are inexperienced. It's usually coming from people who haven't helped a lot of other people with their system. Okay. And also, it is a valuable metric. Let me be clear. Managing calories, you absolutely, even in a sleep study, people lost a similar amount of weight by cutting calories. But what did it do to your metabolism? No, cutting, you mean cutting sleep? My cutting sleep. Yes, my cutting sleep. What is it doing to your metabolism? What is it doing

to the way that your hormones or your neurotransmitters and your organ function, your mitochondria? It's changing you as an individual. It's actually changing how your body operates, right? And so

it is a valuable metric. And somebody like myself, I'm always asking why. And also where did it come from?

Yeah. So the whole concept of the calorie was actually something that was first manifested in the field of physics. That nothing to do with nutritional science. And what happened over time was it kind of parladates way in and to find out how much energy was in a food. They use a bomb color emitter. Basically, we'll just say we take a banana and we incinerate it. We incinerate it. Actually, let's do this. Let's take some almonds. Like, maybe use three ounces of almonds,

completely incinerated and see how much energy. How much it's heating up the water. Basically. All right. So they use it. The bomb color emitter to see how much energy can heat up water. And so that tells you how much energy is in there. Okay. So this was 300 calories worth of energy. Number one, your body is not a bomb color emitter. You're not actually absorbing all of that calorie caloric energy that was dispersed. You are also there's some indigestible aspects of those

almonds. And so there's a study that I cited in my book each smarter years ago that was, um, I'm just paraphrasing problem with the at water system. All right. And the at water system is the calorie system that's on all your food today, which they're not using bomb color emitter anymore. They're just using math. Okay. And, you know, just designating a certain amount of calories

calories for the grams of carbohydrates. But with this, they found that when people consumed, we'll say

“again, 300 calories of almonds, their net gain or net risk, what they're receiving from those almonds,”

was maybe 158 calories. There was a substantial amount of those calories that the body did not metabolize or utilize. And that's not what is, that we don't receive that education. All right. So already the calorie conversation is a little sketchy, right? They're trying to measure manage what's on our wrappers versus our goals. So that's just one. This is minor stuff, though. This is minor. Let's get to the more major stuff here. So what I've designated, like I said,

I could do 10 of these are epicoloric controllers. They're determining how your body interacts with

the calories that you consume. A huge epicoloric controller that we have now designated today

and have a lot of data on is our microbiome makeup. Our gut makeup, our microbiome, this kind of cascade

“of all these different microbes, has a huge impact on what your body's doing with the calories you”

consume. We can literally have a difference of sometimes hundreds of calories, two people eating the same thing. And we see this in twin studies, this is why we know so much data on the microbiome, as far as like obesity, where they can live in the same conditions, he affectionately the same diet, and then what one of the twins is obese versus the other or overweight versus the other. And it's attributed to these categories of bacteria, you know, fermicutes, being one of this kind of

broad class, like how was the ratio? So that's another thing. Another factor that we're not dealing with today is this term, this blanket statement, given to these molecules called obesity agents. Obesigence, create obesity in the body, obesity in independent of calorie intake. It changes the way your body manages the energy that you're taking in. All right. So these obese agents, and we are exposed to billions of them, billions of them on a regular basis.

Again, our air, water, food supply, it's altering the way that people's bodies are interacting with calories. So it's an epicular controller, the quality of food. And this is where we're going to get to like more hardcore science piece. So in each matter, I shared this study that went bonkers, and this was published in the journal Food Nutrition Research. And this was the quality of food itself. So they had people to consume a meal of ultra-process foods versus a meal of

Whole Foods to see the impact that it had on their calorie expenditure. So the two meals, same amount of calories, again, same calories, similar macronutrients. One is ultra-process, cheese product, so like craft singles, and white bread. The other is a whole, quote, whole food sandwich, multi-brain bread cheddar cheese. Okay. And also by Lil' Sidebar, how do they how are they tracking how many calories they're burning? Because what they researched did was they were monitoring

how many calories they burn, posted justion of the sandwich. Right. Okay. We breathe out most of the

“calories. When we're losing calories, we breathe them out. Really? That's how our body gets rid of.”

Because we think like sweating, you know, like getting, but most of it is through our breath,

through breathing. Yeah. So with it anyways, let's put a pin in that. So here's what happened

after analyzing the data. When people ate the ultra-process version of the sandwich, there was a dramatic decrease in the amount of calories that their body was burning after eating that sandwich. Really? So we're talking like 40, upwards of even 60% suppression of calorie burn after eating that sandwich. Okay. And so what the researches can kind of designate was and something will affectionately call a metabolic or a hormonal clog. Like something happened to

gum up the system and to suppress the efficiency of getting rid of those calories they consumed. Now here's the rub. This is a temporary thing. Over the course of the day, your body will probably sorted out how many calories you burn. But if you do that every day, meal after meal, what's going to happen? Your metabolism is going to be totally different. And I know this, this is what, this is how I ate, you know, my university, drive through diet and my metabolism was

very, very different. And it's not about having an efficient metabolism per se, you know, like burning stuff off quickly because we won't survival as well. But it's not creating like artificial blockages to where your body's like, well, the fuck is this fake cheese stuff? Like, let me just

we got space on the, you know, on the neck, we can go ahead add some there on your ass or whatever the

case, my brain, like somebody's compounds are sketchy. Let's just, you know, we will figure this out later. So the sounds, that's interesting. So it sounds to me, it really depends on your genetic space on like how your body metabolizes some of this stuff. So there's neutrogenomics and neutrogenetics. Yes, but it's, but it's, that's the only part of the, it matters. Okay. But it's only a part of, and I don't want to designate a certain amount, but it is a smaller

percentage than a lot of these other epigenetic controllers. So epigenetic means above genetic control. Okay. Okay. Right. Yes, yes, yes, yes. At the caloric is above calorie control. It's controlling what the calories are doing. Okay. This is where we have to focus. Because again, calories matter, we can use this as a metric to get an estimate. Right. But these things matter more because they're determining what your body is actually doing with the calories you're consuming. Do you think we're

also over protein, like, are we just eating way too much protein now because it's become a trend? Like, I feel like everyone, everyone's talking about protein protein protein. It's impossible to consume the amount of protein that people are like, when I say people, I don't know, I think it's like a very like general term, but like, yeah, for sure. But to keep lean muscle,

“it should be eating real food. If you're eating real food, that's what I mean. Like, I mean,”

and if you're not, if you're someone who's busy, right, are you someone who believes that, like, how else could we keep lean muscle mass on? Yeah. I mean, I think I told you a lot, like, when I saw you last time, I take a mean nose. I take, like, I drink these and mean nose with loosen. Do you like a mean nose? Have you, do you take a mean nose or no? I mean, there's room for, for these things, sure. But what would you suggest? Like, what, what it, how me, like, I mean food first,

food first, always. Yeah. But what I'm saying is to keep muscle on, which is, of course, the

longevity organ. We all talk about that. For sure. But what are some ways besides the things we ever, like lifting heavy weights, all the things, like, how do we maintain lean muscle mass as we get older? Yeah. And just with the protein conversation, I'm grateful that we're having the conversation. So in, I wrote each smarter. I wrote the book. It came out at the last week of 2020. But I wrote most of it into 2019. Okay. And there was a special section dedicated protein because when I was in

college, it was low fat. The conversation was so focused on fat. And fat was villainized.

“Do you remember like snack walls? Of course. Like I did all that shit. The smart ones,”

lean cuisine. Me cuisine. Yes. Then it shifted to carbs. Now carbs with the villain, low carb, you know, again, low, it has a place. Low, has a place. But it becomes this like thing where I talked about it earlier with the book situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The publishers looking for they want a proof of concept. The proof of a concept. So they love that shit. When I went in for each smarter for that book deal, you know, it was getting all these different offers. One of the,

I remember very clearly, like they're like, so what kind of book is this? It's going to be like a keto book. Again, like these things are trending, right? 100%. But what was missing? Yeah. Go ahead. No, it was missing. Like now everyone's writing a GLP one book. There's like 11 books that right now. Yeah. It's trending in it. Yeah. These are these are things that sell. But sorry, we're going to say with that being said, it was protein was just kind of left out of the conversation.

Yeah. And so what I wanted to do is elevate that so that we have intelligent focus on all of them, yeah. But also to not hyper focus on all of them, because we don't eat protein carbs and fat, we eat fucking food. We eat food. It's us like obsessing and trying to break down and isolate and like, you know, separate that being said, protein matters a lot. And this is the reason why it's not what it's just about the muscle piece. That, of course, that matters a lot.

It's appreciating. When we're looking at each other, we're mostly seeing proteins that we've eaten.

“Oh. Okay. That's what you mean. Okay. So tissue. So when our genes are sending, you know, like the”

DNA to RNA to protein. Yes. Okay. When we're printing out copies of stuff building blocks. Yep. Those are proteins. It matters a lot. Also minerals. I'm seeing your minerals. All kind of but protein building blocks seriously. Number two, your hormones. They're proteins. Okay.

We need protein to make that. To make them enzymes are required for basically everything

to happen in our body to do with their proteins. There are amino acids and amino acid base. That's why that's why I have these aminos. And you keep a looking at them crazy, but you don't

of like real, so it's not always not real food. I'm a fan, certain like, you know,

the protein supplements, you know, amino acids to be in the mix, but a lot of people are sick. Can you have in a day? Have a day, can you have in a day? Like when you're old, like me or whatever, I mean, I feel like there's like anxiety over how much protein you're eating. Yeah. Yeah. Your, our ability to actually utilize protein does go down as we get older, but it doesn't have to go down substantially. There's certain things that we could do to

still metabolize. That's where the data's really at is for the utilization of protein, especially

“in in the older populations. It is important to focus more on it. But here's the older population.”

So not quite, not quite, but what tends to happen, the protein, like we're eating too much protein, that was this, it's a narrative based on our consumption of all these ultra-process foods. It is easier to eat more protein if I'm eating that shit, right? But it's also ways to eat sugar. It's way easier to eat carbohydrate. Yeah. Maybe those things in the, maybe those things are problematic too, but again, we're isolating things. Yes. What you found, what most people find is that

when you're eating real food, it's difficult to eat a lot of protein. It's like you're just too satisfied. And so we can lean into that because what your body is signaling is that this is something that's satiating. You are getting a lot of value. You're going to find that your mood is better. You're going to find that sure, you know, your hunger cues, hunger cravings, hunger and cravings,

“which are kind of slightly different. Those things are now more regulated. You're making better food”

choices. You're sleeping better. All these positive things happen. This doesn't mean that we got to try to force ourselves, deed more protein. But some of us have tricked ourselves into not eating enough protein because of some other things. Maybe this is we get a big satiating effect when we have coffee in the morning with our fat in it, our butter or cream or our protein. Whatever we're putting the coffee, and then we don't eat for four hours, because of that, right? Or maybe

we're so dedicated to our intermittent fast and we're missing out on getting in the protein.

And your body is always looking for being able to automate and so you've trained yourself

to not eat a lot and maybe again. So why this matters also is that protein really is the most prominent as a signal for safety for success. Like your body is like, because it's used for so many things to regenerate you and to keep you healthy. Okay. So when you're getting in, ample amounts of protein, this can be very effective with helping to metabolize stress. The whole common cortisol phase and like the cortisol belly, like you can really help your body

to get safety signals. Okay. It's okay to let this weight go. Right. Again, not to negate calories, but it's shifting your metabolism, your metabolic blueprint so that it's more efficient in getting rid of body fat. Right. And we know that that protein helps our bodies to preferentially protect our muscle. Do you think cardio maintain like keeps body fat on our bodies or is it helping with losing body fat? The reason why I'm asking is, there's again, I'm asking these questions that I know

that there's all these like contradictions, right? No cardio, only do that. Have you heard of that 12? I think I asked you last time. 12, the incline 12 and the speed at three for 30 minutes. Have you heard of this workout? Yeah. It's like a very popular. Everyone's doing it. They're saying that it's like the greatest workout that's in sliced bread. I think it's fine, but it's not going to change

your body composition, right? It's always something. It's always something, right? Like also hit training,

also whatever it is. Yeah. We're not talking about movement for, you know, your steps. Obviously, it's very important. You know, I'm all about finding an edge. The small daily habits that give you

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Jennifer20 for a discount. That's monovatality.com. M-A-N-N-A vitality.com and use code Jennifer20. Let's talk about body composition. How do we actually, what are the ways we can change

“our body composition? Besides lifting weights, is there anything else we can do?”

We'll sleep. We'll sleep, but I forgot obviously, sleep, lifting weights. As far as the cardio being effective, fat loss, or anything like losing muscle, giving cardio is a good strategy for fat loss. This goes back to in a one. It depends on who you are. It's a context driven, for some people. Because it's the truth. There's not one thing that suits everybody, right? There are certain things that have a much more universal, like walking.

Because we're bipedal, it's just something our genes expect us to do. Exactly. Also, we know that our metabolism works differently when we're walking versus when we're running. It will preferentially go and grab stored fat for fuel. A little bit easier versus going through

“this kind of glycolic path. No talk about that. You say, are you just saying that when people walk”

versus run, you'll burn more fat in the right way? This is validated, because I didn't believe it. I don't like, because it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to me either. One of the things that I was taught was that your body will number one, it's like a life-old

faithful, like in accounting class. You know, last-in first-out first-in first-out. So your body's

going to use the last-in first-out. So last-in is the food you just ate. It's going to burn through that glycogen cache on hand first for energy processes. Then it'll go and break down glycogen, store glycogen, if need be. After it burns to the cache, muscle, liver glycogen. That's like writing a check. It'll take a little bit more time, and then it will go to the fat certificates of

“deposit. Then an only thing, it will start to... Now remember this, because when I was doing like”

my certification, there was this chart of getting to the fat burning zone. You got to go through this process and try to get here, and so you can start burning fat. In reality, your body is so much smarter than all this bullshit. It's going to use energy based on the demands and based on efficiency. What we forget in our mission to lose body fat and to get this body that we want to have, your body's number one driving force is survival. It wants to survive and wants to be capable.

And so over time, we've evolved because of that walking experience of humans of walking around, you know, laboring and doing stuff, walking from location to location, fat is a very efficient, slow burning fuel, right? And you're not under threat if you're walking. This is very important. If you're running a long time, based on your biology, this could be this mother fucker will not stop running something must be chasing them. Or they can't catch their food. We got to keep going.

Okay, not to say that's not valuable to do from time to time or if that just if it works for you. But for most people, it's efficient when we're walking because it's more parasympathetic. It's not like running is very, very sympathetic, fight or flight. It is what it is. And we can go and cleave off. Like there's like an amplification cascade where we'll start burning off a lot of fatty ass and not burning off. Releasing stored fatty ass. Yeah, yeah. As a difference between

releasing and burning, it has to get to the mitochondria to be used for fuel. That's a whole other story. Most efficient way to do that is walking, actually. Just going to you're saying. Fuck the zones. Yeah. Okay, thank God. Respectfully. No, please. I can't stand these zones. Oh, too, be okay. Well, just you know what it's like to just go for a relaxing walk or maybe a little bit more brisk walk. You know, like you just beat, it's okay. Just be cool.

Just go walk. It's okay. It's right. And actually this is a great opportunity to relax, to get into that parasympathetic. Right? We've turned it into now again. Like we've got the, you know, the street warriors with the, you know, with the weighted vest. Of course, everybody's wearing the weighted vest. I help you copy the rest of this. My guy, Michael Easter.

Like, yeah, you're the second person that mentioned him today. Yeah, like, why did you just

person as far as, like, a voice, a research because he mentioned it in one of his previous books.

“He was your time by selling author. I think it was a scarcity.”

No, it's scarcity. The scarcity is something. But yeah, but he's, but when he was on my show, it took off like wildfire. Really? It took off like wildfire. Like social media, all the stuff. The way to best. Yeah. Yeah. What do you say about the weighted vest? We do burn more calories. It is more efficient. You're adding more resistance. Yeah. But here's something really cool. Yeah. So I went to and worked with a leading researcher at UCLA who's a gastroenterologist,

actually, and he's been studying gravitational metabolism and how gravity is affecting what what our, what our metabolic health is doing. Not just our metabolic health, but also like our

gut health. Okay. And so what was so cool in there's really fascinating study that found that

people when you lose weight, like your gravitational stat. You have just like the circadian clocks,

“just like you have a thermostat in your body trying to regulate the temperature. We have a”

gravitational stat that is your body's kind of buoyancy or resistance to the forces of gravity. All right. And so when you lose weight and it's already your gravitational stat has been a tune to a certain amount of mass that you're carrying on this planet. What happens is your body is, this is part of the reason why it is difficult to change that set point and to lose weight and to keep it off because your body is looking for it's not just a superficial thing, but it's looking

for stability and safety in this world and this, the physics of this reality. And so what the researchers found was that people who were a weighted vest pound for pound matching the amount of calories that they lost kept the weight off much longer. Yes. They kept it. And some of them, I mean, the study, you know, for towards the end of the study over a year later, maybe the people who didn't do the weighted vest protocol, they might have most often they regain all the weight

that they lost. Really? And a little bit more, just again, traditional stuff, traditional means, but maybe these people regain like 20% of the weight that they lost. Of course, about your study,

for example. So it's just like it was basically telling their gravidoset, telling their metabolism,

telling their, you know, their brain, their biology that I still have this, this, this weight on me, this force on me and it's okay. Basically, I don't have to gain all these extra pounds because I'm still carrying this weight around in a sense. And I don't know that I'm making this very rudimentary. And that's interesting about that is we're not wearing the weight of vest from more than an hour a day, right? So how does that work? They're wearing it all day. They're weighing

it basically, they're waking hours. Oh, really? Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, so I failed to mention that part. Yes,

“so you're not just making sense. So that's why they're gravidoset. That's why they're”

overall gravitudials, whatever the word is. Gravidoset, yeah. Gravidoset, yeah. That is the they think, if it's tricking the baseline to think it's much heavier than it is. My question is, I wear this weighted with best around all day, but it's only six pounds. Does that count? It's not really that heavy. Of course, of course, that counts. Yeah, but it's really small. So what? It's versus zero, I feel. It's very comfortable, I like. It's just, again, I, we even got into this. So, but by the way,

let me go ahead and share this study really quick. Okay, go ahead. I like that. I love these. There's there's multiple studies, but just here's one. This one was published in the International Journal of Obesity. Okay. Analyze how gravitational loading during conventional calorie restricted weight loss influences subsequent weight regain 18 test subjects six months. This is a cross over study as well. So six months calorie restricted diet, standard in six months, place in another arm of the study

with the weighted vest worn throughout. And so they were wearing instructing to wear the weighted vest for about 10 hours a day, just living life doing their typical routine. And again, it was increased by pounds. So they might have started off with the one pound vest, but maybe they had eventually lost five pounds so they're wearing a five pound vest. Okay. So I'm just consolidating all the data here. The weighted vest grew resting metabolic rate only went down by about 16 calories a

day because the metabolic rate will compensate as well. Right. So that's another reason we regain the weight is that you lose this weight, but your metabolism is going to slow down, because for survival, people when they didn't use the weighted vest, their metabolic rate went down by nearly 250 calories a day that they were burning less. Okay, without the weighted vest. We're in the weighted vest, they're metabolic rate only went down by 16 calories a day on average. That's it. That's it.

So this is why this is why they were able to have a greater effect in more stability and consistency

Dr. Brennan Spiegel is the guy who, you know, I connected with, you see L.A. Super smart guy.

Yep. Okay. I love that. So because I always think that everyone has a baseline, you know,

like, these are all just my like genisms, like number, what I read or whatever, but like, I always thought like, you know, like, there's only so much you can like, if I feel like my body's very comfortable to certain weight. Yeah. And I can only tweak it that much here or there, but I'll always come back to baseline if I don't do the things I do. Do you know what I mean? Of course, of course. And so I just, so there is accuracy around that. So then, what do you think of all the peptides

situations? Do you believe in peptides? Are you taking peptides? And we don't know. Okay. What is that's good to know? That's good. You say you don't know.

I mean, I, I know some, but I'm glad that you said that. What I tend to do is, I'm not the guy

rushing on saying this and that about, you know, different things like there's so much, there's,

“it's a, it's a bit of, do you take any? How about that? No, I have not. Yeah. What is your, I want to know?”

Not against it though. Let me be clear. No, I'm not saying you are. There's some, there's some weird shit going on. There, there is a lot of inaccuracy. There is some effectiveness as well with certain peptides, but it's just it's a mess right now. It's a mess. And again, we're still doing the same habit of looking for that hack. Okay, that's a geopulant believe it. Believe it. Believe in is a strong word. Do you, I'm not going to change my word. Do you believe in it? Do you believe in it? They are

effective. Yes. They are effective for weight loss. They're not effective for sustainable weight loss. If you're not continuing to take them. No, I know. I've seen people gain back their weight in a month. Yeah. And of course, there are, I've got some colleagues who are testing to like do micro doses as they go on and to see if it had, but still the jury is out on that. And also just the accessibility for people to be that stringent is very, is very difficult and complex. When again,

people are just looking to get the weight off. You know, and or get their blood sugar, normalize, and you know, the insulin resistance and check out of the case might be. So

“the unfortunate thing I think with the geop ones is we're ignoring a part of biology, which is”

with that satiety, what normally would signal satiety is bioavailable abundance or a resources, or what it would normally be signaling is that we are, that we have enough. Okay, just to put it in a kind of like a blunt statement, we, we have our knees are met. And I'm speaking about this from a biological, not like psychological, but like we have the protein that we need to sustain our livelihood. We have the minerals that we need. We have the, you know, the vitamins that we need.

We have everything that we need to keep you alive and healthy. I'm saying all that to say that what happens, what traditionally, what our hunger would be driven by is a drive to get these resources in. And so we're hacking the system and we're muting a key part of our bodies intelligence. Thank you. One of the largest reasons for overeating chronic, nutrient deficiency, least, or chronic overeating. Okay, so our bodies are, look, hunger is largely driven by this desire

to get things in us. And I'm saying this, this is what, it's not just hypothetical, this is what the data shows. So we will proactively seek out certain nutrients. There is an intelligence that our body has, but it's been all fucked up. And so a good example is there's studies that were multiple studies done on this, but they did some studies on sheep. All right, because they can kind of force feed them certain things. And so let's, let's not even get into the force fed sheep. That's kind of creepy.

Bottom line is this. No, I want to hear. If your body is deficient in... You know, in the fish of force fed sheep, I like stories like this. Tell me about the sheep. And then you can go home. Well, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about that,

I don't want to talk about it. Yeah, I got the sheep. Okay, yeah. Tell it. So basically,

“when we see a sheep detectives, like it's fucked up, I've never seen it. Have you?”

Maybe shortly. Really? Hugh Jagman. The person who shared this study with me is Mark Schatzker, and he's got a great book called The Dorito Effect. Okay, so people should check that out, but I want to keep this in a human context. Okay. So if we're deficient in, say, calcium, right, so we need calcium, not just for our strong, strong, strong bones. Yeah, yeah. But for our blood to clot properly, it's an electrolyte, so it's like important, like signal transduction. It's

fucking important. Historically, if we were deficient in calcium, our body, we would develop a craving

Deficiency, it's very abundant in so many foods, but the limey's, right? The skin scurvy,

this drive to like, gorge on citrus, because your body has this craving for the certain thing to get that nutrient to run processes. So I guess I would, my next, my next, my final question, supplements supplementation, but I think you just answered it a little bit. Would you believe a, would you believe in supplementation? Would you think that there are

“any essentials that you should be taking every day or what is your, what do you take every day?”

If you're deficient, yes. Right. I'm just going to say that. If you're, if you're good and you're eating well-rounded diet where you don't need to, there's certain, I'm very big where I'm at today. I used to, a lot, a lot of stuff. Different times, I've done all the things. I know.

You can't even imagine what my cabinets have looked like. I'm sure, what do they look like today?

Today, what I will occasionally take is an omega-3 supplement. Okay, occasionally. Yeah, I mean, because I'm eating a lot of foods that are rich in omega-3s, and also the quality, the sourcing of those omega-3s, no matter a lot. There's a lot, yeah. You know, you ideally want to have something that has ascents in it. Yeah, I take that as a supplement, even. Yeah. So, that bad? No, no, not at all. It's protective of those omega-3s. Okay.

Magnize him occasionally. Occasionally, vitamin C. You take vitamin C. Food-based, though, food-based. So, like a concentrate of a vitamin C dense food, like camel camel berry, amelibary, those kind of things.

“Because synthetic vitamin C, that's what most vitamin C supplements are. That's derived from”

genetically modified corn, syrup, corn starch, and we've got multiple studies showing that higher incidence of kidney stones. Less change. One of these studies was actually done the Journal of Cardiology. Looked at camel camel berry, C-A-M-U-C-A-M-U, vitamin C, versus synthetic vitamin C, supplementary capsule, or low-emergency pitipack. It's a shit that you see anywhere. And had smokers who, that is a strong oxidant oxidative behavior to take both either of these. And so,

what they found was that there was no beneficial effect on oxidation, or antioxidant effect, taking a synthetic version. There's test subjects taking the camel camel berry, had a notable decrease in C-reactive protein, which is an inflammatory marker, right? So, we know the vitamin C helps, but the source matters. So, I'll occasionally take vitamin C, omega-3s, and, yeah, I mean, those are the two main things that I'll occasionally take. But,

then there's some other stuff in the mix. Sometimes, like, a tumor-ex supplement here at there, or, you know, maybe an organ complex. That's interesting, no. Because I eat real food, and I eat a lot of good food. You didn't say one that everybody takes is vitamin D. You see me? You see my complexion? Exactly. Like, I'm outside, I'm getting ample amounts of sun, not against it. Right. I think everyone just jumps on band wagons, and they don't even know, like, I was on

that bandwagon, and then I check my, you know, my levels in my blood. And I was like three times,

“three times higher than I should have been. So, that's what I do. Exactly. They're like,”

"Oh, everyone needs to take vitamin D, so I'm like, I'll take vitamin D." And then I'm like, "Oh, what plan was poison myself with vitamin D?" And just because, by the way, I was kind of being, you know, funny about that, but like, just because your complexion doesn't mean that you're getting enough vitamin D. No, no, I know. I mean, many people who have a darker complexion, African-American are deficient in vitamin D. Yeah. It's like sunscreen,

basically. And so, but I do spend ample amounts of time in the sun at the right times,

getting the UVB. And, you know, there's some vitamin D in certain foods, you know, but it's not, again, it's could be like some sardines, it's like mushrooms, not the same, by the way. But sardines is like a big one though, right now. Everyone loves sardines. It's a very, you're going to find some derivatives. Like, again, there's D1, there's D2, but a vitamin D2 supplement is one of the most studied supplements. It's, I'm not, I definitely

have had my fair share of vitamin D2. What about creatine? I'm sorry, vitamin D3. Yeah, vitamin D3. I was going to say, you meant vitamin D3 with K2? Was that what you meant? Yes, and K2. Yeah. How's it? How's it? I don't know. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So, this is what I do too. I'm just, I'm just asking you the questions. How do you know I combine them together? Is that the most people to know? Made a weird baby with it? Because that's what

everybody does because it doesn't absorb without the K2. And with the D in the K, if you, like, spell that out sound that out, what is that sound? If you say the D in the K together, do you want me to see it right now? Say it. No, don't make me do that. Okay, so shall we're going to wrap it up?

And what else? That's it. Well, for those of you who don't know Sean, listen to his podcast,

“he's very, very knowledgeable as you can see. And we'll do this again round three, round two and a half.”

I love that. All right. Thanks, Sean. Talk to you. Oh, for those of you who have not subscribed,

please subscribe. Also, always leave me comments. Tell me what new light don't like so

then I can always make the show better. Thank you. And goodbye.