3 Experts Reveal the Secrets to Optimizing Your Nutrition : 1201

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

Do you use ghee or olive oil?

Like, what kinds of oils do you recommend for kids?

The, the main cooking fat in the cookbook is ghee. And there's, there's olive oil in there. I use duck fat, tallow. But the main, the main cooking fat in there, because I think it's really accessible for parents too, is, is ghee.

Yep.

And in my house and in the bulletproof diet, it's always been ghee, tallow, duck fat, which is not quite as good as tallow, but still pretty good. Or rendered lard from pasture raised pigs that didn't eat corn and soy, which is decent but not amazing. And maybe some coconut oil or palm oil if you need to. Or, you know, the local restaurant wants to use palm oil. That's a safe oil. It's just not as good as the others. So that's amazing for kids. And what happens when kids start eating those kinds of oils?

Well, I think it's good for their brains. Yeah, it's good for their, yeah, their bodies. I mean, they're growing so, so rapidly that I think it just feeds. Feeds their brains.

It definitely, in the studies I've seen, it feeds their brains. It also accelerates their metabolism. Saturated fats warm you up. The polyunsaturated fats slow metabolic rate. And when you first eat only plant oils for about six weeks, you get high from it because your body panics and gives you extra thyroid hormone until your thyroid runs out of the ability to do that and then your metabolism starts to slow. In fact, it's omega 6 fats that cause bears to hibernate in the winter. If you give them butter, they don't hibernate. They just keep going. So I don't want my kids hibernating. It doesn't seem like it's good for them. And so that's one of the things. It's energy and it's also satiety. 1. There's a couple stories that come up for me. One of them is incredibly bougie. But we, we feed our kids in the morning. It was back when they were younger, it was avocados and smoked salmon for breakfast. Because smoked salmon from Costco, you know, can get sockeye salmon. It's actually surprisingly cheap.

More expensive than baloney, but not that much more expensive.

And we would do that with some sort of grain free wrap that we would put together for them and they loved it. But then, you know, one day, my son, as all toddlers do, is going, nah, and you know, I don't want to. And I said, hey, some kids who go to school don't get any breakfast. Or maybe they just get a bag of chips, like, like you're really lucky to have smoked salmon. And he looks at me, almost has tears in his eyes. He goes, you mean their mommies don't make them. Because this is what he wanted. Breakfast. Because you mean their mommies don't make them bacon and duck eggs for breakfast? Because our local farm had duck eggs. So, like, he's having the best food on the planet and he's just mad.

Because he didn't get that food instead.

Of the other best food on the planet. And I just was shaking my head going, you have no idea. Um, but he did eat the smoked salmon, so that was good. Um, and then my daughter came home from kindergarten or first grade or whatever, and she says, daddy, as soon as I get to school, the teachers try.

To make me eat and I'm not hungry.

I just had breakfast. How can the other kids eat? Don't they have breakfast? And I, I said, well, ask them what they have. And she comes back and says, you know, little Susie or whatever her name is, she had a green apple for breakfast. I said, well, if you ate a.

Green apple, would you be hungry?

And she said, yeah. I go, that's why the teachers are doing it. So I had to actually sit down with the teachers and say, don't make my kid eat if she's not hungry. How do you handle that with your kids?

Well, I think that I talk about this in the cookbook. We over snack. I want my kids to come to breakfast. I want them to eat meals over snacks.

Yeah.

And so I do. And to honor their body, if they're saying they're not hungry, not going to force them to eat, they, I want that they know their body. I don't know their body. But I think that what happens and, and I'm guilty of this, so I'm not perfect, is when my kids have over snacked, they aren't going to come to the table hungry. They are going to pick around if there's a new food that I want them to eat. They're less likely to eat it if they're not hungry. And I think that snacks are just that, they're just marketed to, you know, you know, schools, preschools, parents, all of us, we've all, you know, we live in a snack kind of obsessed world. And so I think that snacks are fine, but I, I want to be really, I try to be mindful about them, because I really do think sitting down and having real meals is what is. Is the. The healthiest and keeps us full and. And feeling. Feeling better than grazing all day.

One of the things that worked for me when the kids were protesting new foods is. And I only had to do this.

Once, actually, I said, you know what?

I'm so happy that you've decided to join me in an intermittent fast. It turns out our bodies could live for 60 whole days or more without dying of starvation, even if we're really hungry. So let's both put our food in the fridge, and we can intermittent fast.

As long as you like.

And instead of the normal thing, which is parents, we innately feel that, like, we are starving if our child is hungry, because we're wired by mother nature to make sure our kids eat. Like, it's a very deep, visceral parental response, but it's automated in your body's operating system. And when I said that, just looked at me fine. And then he ate, and he never pulled it again. Because they eat what we eat. The downside, though, is we go to a restaurant, there's no kids menu expensive.

They look at the kids menu, and they're like, what is this crap? Like, are you serious? You know, macaroni and cheese and fish sticks. Like, we would feel our tummies would.

Hurt if we ate that. We're not going to eat that because they have eaten it once or twice and their tummy's hurt, and we're done with that. So it is expensive. You go to eat, they eat the salmon or they eat the steak, because that's what they have at restaurants that's edible. And all this, you know, lasagna with whatever chemicals in it, it doesn't work. Everyone's hungry or gets a headache after they eat that. It's, you know, it tastes good, but it's not a good choice.

So, yeah, it's quite expensive.

But that's why we eat at home a lot.

Yeah, And I say. I say that a lot, too. Like, the cookbook is marketed as kid food, or. But it. The recipes are their family recipes. Therefore, it's adult. Adult food, kid food. It's the same thing. And that's what I'm trying to. I had to market the book, but, like, I want this to be for parents. Like, we have to eat the same foods as our kids because we're modeling what. What we, you know, want them to be eating. So they need to see us eating the foods that. That we want them to Be enjoying.

And.

And they're not the exception, I think at the dinner table. Sounds exhausting to be cooking two different meals anyways. But I just. I want my kids to see us enjoying the foods that. With them.

How many dishwashers do you have?

We don't have a dishwasher.

Holy crap.

You know, Barbara. No dishwasher. Are you a masochist?

Yes. We do not have a dishwasher. We. We have. Yeah, we. We have a small. A small house, small kitchen. I'm actually at my friend's house right now because my house is too crazy to be doing an interview at.

But no, the two small kids. I get it.

Yeah. But, yeah, no, we do not have. We have a dog, so he's our Similar. Yeah, so he. So he does a lot of the cleanup. But, yeah, no, no dishwasher.

Wow.

So one of the things that.

That. Because we're doing three meals a day, usually with the kids, and it's just too many dishes. So I lobbied very hard to get a second dishwasher, but it changed our lives. It saved at least 45 minutes a day. That's because you just set the table out of one dishwasher and clear it into the other and. Oh, my God, it was. It was literally so much more quality time with the kids. But our. Our dogs don't eat people food because when they do, they fart all over the place, and it didn't work for them, so they just eat raw meat and they're much happier.

So, yeah, our dog. Our dogs don't have the best. Best diet. But, yeah, no, no, no dishwasher. So we just. There's a lot of dishes. There's a lot of dishes, but I've gotten efficient. I've. We. I've never had a dishwasher, so I don't know. I don't know the. The difference. All right, maybe that's it.

Hats off. That's impressive. I thought you were gonna say had one. I was gonna upsell you on two, but, yeah, yeah, it's. It does become. For a lot of parents, though, especially if you have a. A normal job with a normal commute, the amount of time it takes to do food prep, even if you're not doing, like, the crazy vegan thing I used to do, where, you know, two hours of soaking and blending and sprouting and all that crap, it can be just overwhelming. So what's the fastest recipe in your book?

Oh, gosh, you're putting me on the spot. The fastest recipe. I mean, I do. I mean, eggs I think, you know, that's sort of my lazy dinner is, you know, doing some sort of an omelette or a quiche, just, you know, quick stove top eggs, which I have in here, but I do a lot of, I call them just like pancakes, but like these two ingredient pancakes where it's eggs and either meat or, and you can dollop it with some, you know, yogurt or some herbs on top. But I kind of do these little blender meat or vegetable pancakes with eggs and just fry them up. And that can be a meal with, you know, a little side. But the, but the recipes are, all the recipes in the book are, are catered towards busy parents because I, I'm there. I, I, you know, I don't want to be spending out. But if, you know, but you are cooking, they, they are still recipes, you are still cooking, but they are. With busy parents with, with jobs in.

Mind, it's so tempting to go to Uber Eats or somebody and just have some seed oil soaked, slightly cold restaurant food sent to your house that's expensive and you, and you feel like you're saving time and then you realize your trash can is full, you gotta take the trash out and you had to tip the delivery guy and you just realized you didn't save time when you did that. And when you become efficient in your kitchen, which parenting drives kitchen efficiency in a way that's insane when you do that. Like, oh, I cooked the entire thing in one pot. We did a lot of soups. I love the omelette thing. It works really well. And we throw the veggies and the meat in the pan, saute them a little bit, you know, take some blended, you know, raw egg stuff and pour it on them and there you go. Like it. It's an actual protein and fat rich, healthy meal. Unless you're allergic to eggs, which a lot of kids are these days. So I, I love that it's one pan or maybe two if, if you have to do two at a time. So I love that that you.

In the cookbook and there's a lot, there's a lot of sheet pans in the, and sheet pan meals in the cookbook as well. So kind of same idea, one pan and in the oven and just got to chop a little bit.

It's totally manageable.

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Why does it take up to 30 exposures for a baby to get used to a particular food?

So this was, this is what I learned from a feeding specialist, a child feeding specialist. And I think that, and most kids, it's not up to 30, but it can take up to 30 exposures. And I think that kids, you know, there, there can be a fear around a new food or what it looks like, what it feels like in their mouth. And it goes back to that kind of, you're modeling what you want your kids to eat. So even if your kid doesn't eat something or I always encourage parents, don't, don't, don't say my kid doesn't like this anymore. Like they're learning, they're still learning, they're new eaters. So I think if you want your kids to like beets, continue to serve them, maybe in different ways. But even if they're not eating them, I think it's still important to have them on the plate. And not. And also not. I don't think we should let our kids hear us say, oh, they don't like that, or they're not going to eat that, I think. And I. And I'm. I've had to catch myself with like, oh, she's not going to eat that. And. And we don't know. They'll surprise us. And. And they go through phases, and that's just part of toddlerhood and young children. But I think that the 30 exposures is. Is a real. A high number. But it was. It's a real kind of real study that, yeah, it can take. It can take a while. So don't give up on if your kid turns their nose up at broccoli. Keep going.

One of the things that I learned as a. As a parent, as a farming parent is that if my kids usually liked, say, broccoli or some sort of a food, and then one night, like, I don't want to eat that, I used to just make them eat it. Like, come on, like, that's what you do. And what I noticed was that those are the nights when I wouldn't feel good after dinner and the kids would misbehave and they'd have tummy aches. And eventually I realized that there is something called alternaria brassicas, which is a type of mold that grows in brassicas, which is broccoli and cabbage and things like that. And it grows when they're wet. I live in Canada, where it's always wet. And most of the research on that.

Particular mold is from Russia.

But I would notice too, on those nights, like, God, I got like a weird headache and I'm sort of seeing colors. That's. It's called alternaria because it makes you see colors and, you know, it rips up your gut and it's just not good for you. So I realized my kids were using.

Their internal radar to say, I don't.

Want to eat that. So after a while, especially after age five, like, okay, if they always like this, but this time they don't want to eat it. I probably shouldn't eat it either, because some part of them knows.

And.

And then it's.

It's down to training versus intuition.

And I still wouldn't say that I've at all mastered it, but I noticed it enough that I always thought twice. And. But that's only after they're used to it and they like it. And if they suddenly don't want to eat it that one time, you might ask them why. And if they don't know why, maybe it's all right to skip it.

Do you do that?

Oh, totally. And I, it's hard, but I try and it goes back to like, I can control what goes on the plate, but they ultimately control what goes into their mouth. And I want the dinner table to be a joyful place. And I, I think if, if we try and micromanage too much, it turns into, into not an enjoyable experience, but I, I do. Yeah, exactly. Like if, if, if my daughter's saying my tummy hurts or I'm full, I don't want her to ignore her intuition. She knows how she feels. I don't. And our kind of rule for the most part is we will save, you know. No, that's okay. You don't have to eat, but we'll save this for later. No snacks.

One of my favorite types of recipes, even on the bulletproof diet, which works for kids, but it's designed for anyone, is purees. And my all time favorite is like a cauliflower mash. You know, boil, steam or roast cauliflower, blend it with some butter or some ghee or whatever and, and it, it tastes good. In fact, I had that for lunch with my son today and we threw some chunks of steak on it and that was like a very fast one pan meal with probably three tablespoons of dried herbs to get all the polyphenols and we're full and happy after that. You have some amazing recipes like that in your book as well, but you do some interesting stuff. You talk about using dust, duck fat or olive oil. So when you're doing your deviled cauliflower mash, which is similar, but it's got a unique take. Do you remember that recipe off the top of your head?

I, I, I remember most of the components, but I, I add a hard boiled egg yolk to it which makes it, and I've even since then, I'll sometimes add two or three, but it makes it extra creamy, extra nutritious, extra fatty. It's delicious.

And you also add some yogurt or goat or cow or I would, you don't have it in your recipe, but I use sheep yogurt whenever I can because it's the, the best you can get from human compatibility. And you, you do that, which gives it a real cheesy kind of flavor along with some thyme. So that's the kind of recipe. I had not thought of adding a hard boiled egg yolk, but I can see how that would be more of like a deviled egg consistency. So it, it, there's, there's really good flavors and that's going to fill you up because of the fat and you're going to pair it probably with some kind of protein. Right. What's your favorite protein to eat with something like a deviled cauliflower mash?

Oh, like a steak. I think it's steak. And then just, and then just, you know, doing the, you know, fork it, fork the steak, dip it in the mash and.

Yeah, that's, yeah, it's heavenly when you do that. I don't know if it reminds me of childhood or something, but it's just, it's, it's better than mashed potatoes. Um, the other thing that I've been doing for a long time is if I'm in a hurry, I will take some of the, like I used to use the bulletproof collagen back when I was involved with the company. Um, but I will take a grass fed collagen protein and I will take a few scoops of that and put it in there and it's invisible. You cannot taste it, you cannot see it. Kids don't even know it's there. I tell them though, cause I want em to know. Uh, and then all of a sudden you just added 60 grams of high quality animal protein to a meal that helps to build their connective tissue in their skin and they don't see it like they would a steak, even though they want the steak. So that's kind of my secret. I'll add that to almost any recipe in your book and you can't.

I like that. I like that.

All right.

When kids are eight months and beyond.

Pediatricians say, don't give salt to babies. But you talk about giving salt to babies.

How dare you.

Yeah, I, I think that, you know, again, I wrote the book with, I want people to take what they're most comfortable with. So I use, I use salt sparingly in recipes for the minerals and it can help with digestion and help increase the nutrients of, of the food.

Why would you use it sparingly? That doesn't seem to make.

Well, I mean, yeah, I use it kind of sparingly, but. But you would have a heavy hand, it sounds like. So I think go with whatever you're comfortable with. Um, but yeah, but yeah, I use, I use salt in the, in the cookbook and if you Google salt and baby I mean, it. No, no one, you know, when I was starting to feed my children. Yeah, no salt. And anytime you have a recipe out there with salt, it's like, don't give this to babies under one. And, and just through my own kind of reading up on it, I, I, I, I disagree. You know, agreed to disagree.

What did you find in your research.

On salt and digestion in babies?

Well, I like the cookbook that I, that was the most inspiring to me. Or the book was Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. And she, yeah, it really is. And I give her a lot of credit to making me feel more confident as a mom and the choices that I was making in the kitchen for my, for my children. And, and she kind of gets into the talking about salt and children, and I kind of felt more comfortable than not.

Almost 20 years ago, when I was running Palo Alto's first anti aging nonprofit education group, before I started the bio working movement, I gave this really carefully researched talk on salt and the history of why we decided salt was bad for us. It's not. We used to eat about 20 grams of salt a day because we didn't have refrigerators and all of our meat and all of our fish was salted. And it did not cause high blood pressure, did not cause problems. It gave us a ton of minerals. And so our salt consumption has dropped so much that if you were to follow the FDA's guidelines and why anyone would listen to them after the last three or four years, I don't know. But if you still followed their, their guidelines and had less than 2.4 grams of salt a day for an adult, that is so low that it increases your heart attack risk, because when sodium is too low, it increases stress, which increases a hormone in the blood called rennet, which increases heart attack risk. But if you were to instead have 4 grams, or when I do 8 grams a day for my body weight and to keep my blood pressure where I want, completely changes your digestion, changes your life. And if you're on a keto or a carnivore diet, you need even more. So the idea that your baby is supposed to not have salt, even though salt helps with a stress response. No, you probably don't want to have a heavy hand of salt, but you do want a little bit of salt, because we're made out of salt water.

And how's your baby supposed to hydrate.

If it doesn't have a little bit of salt? So that advice is absurd, it's wrongheaded, and it doesn't make Any sense. So the idea that somehow babies are little aliens that don't need normal nutrients, a lot of that's overblown. But don't give your little babies honey, right? That seems like that might be a problem, right?

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The power of regenerative agriculture, starting with the seed and the farm and the soil that produce more nutrient dense food is better for you, that is actually more profitable for the farmers. That conserves water, that eliminates the need for agrochemicals, that helps to mitigate climate change and drought and floods, and makes the farmer 20 times as much money and at the same time draws carbon out of the atmosphere, puts it in the soil where it belongs. I mean, one third of all the carbon today in the atmosphere from climate change, one third comes from soil erosion, from the loss of organic matter in the soil as a result of over tillage and the use of antibiotics on the soil. What I mean by antibiotics, like glyphosate is a microbiome destroying compound that's used on the soil. It's on 70% of all crops. It's the most abundant agrochemical use around the world. It's like hundreds of millions of pounds of this stuff every year. Billions of pounds. I think it's ridiculous the amount they, they use, you know?

You know, Mark, if, if, if I.

Wasn'T already taken, I think I, I would want to marry you.

I know, I know we have a problem going on here.

But like, like what you're saying. Yeah, it's, it's why I live on a small farm, it's why I'm building soil, it's why I eat what I grow and it makes such a difference. And you can see where the animals poop, the plants are twice as tall, and I put it on my Instagram channel. I'm like, look, do you see this line right here? That's where the fence was. This is where the sheep poop. This is where there is no sheep poop. And we want to fix the planet. You know, Elon Musk is saying, I'm going to spend a hundred million dollars on carbon capture. I'm like, it's called farming done right. That is the biggest carbon capture we can have. And it makes you live longer and healthier and you eat the stuff that comes off that land.

Exactly.

There's no loser in the system.

Exactly.

Except Big Ag in Monsanto.

Right? It's true. There are, there are some losers. And what's really fascinating is it's looking even. This is not some left wing opinion thing. It's, you know, the UN has come out and said if we take 2 million of the 5 million degraded hectares of land around the world that has been degraded through modern agriculture and we convert it to regenerative agriculture, incorporating animals in the ecosystem to build soil, we could, it would cost $300 billion, which is basically less than we spend for Medicare and diabetes every year. And also, I mean, we spent $3.7 trillion in America, direct indirect costs for obesity and diabetes. 3.7 trillion, we're talking about 300 million. Could convert 2 of those million hectares of land into regenerative agriculture would stop climate change for 20 years, giving us more time to figure things out. And it would produce better food. More food. And, and the thing is, people understand is like, well, we could be all vegans to, to save the planet. And then climate change and factories, factory farming is an abomination. It's bad for the animals, it's bad for humans who eat them. It's bad for the planet a hundred percent. We should ban them. They should be no longer on the planet. We should get rid of every single one. I mean, I was just talking to my friend Kelly Braddell. He said there's like 69 million chickens and 30 million hogs in like, North Carolina is one county. And it's, it's just so toxic and polluted.

It's horrifying.

That does not mean that done in the right way, according to ecological principles, incorporating animals into an overall ecosystem on a farm is a bad thing. In fact, it's a necessary thing. And, and then you could literally stop climate change for 20 years, giving us Runway to figure things out. So we really need to move in that direction. And under the Biden administration, they're now talking about creating an initiative on regenerative agriculture. I've been working with administration and try to get farmers and others involved in communicating these ideas. And I think there's a real openness to it. And what's interesting is when you do that, when you eat in a way that, that is choosing. And by the way, there's very few regenerative farms out there, so you really need to hunting seriously gather for these places. But they're out there and they're resourced in the book. But the more people ask for it, demand it, encourage it, more people shop at farmers markets, go to their community, support agriculture. Buy online from regenerative farmers like Bel Campo or Mariposa Ranch and others. And I think Gabe Brown, I think, I think I forget the name of his regenerative product company, but he's got a great regenerative Meat service as well. If you do that, you start to move the market. Right? You start to move the market. You see what's happening with all these health brands. It's really driving the marketplace. That's why General Mills and Danone have literally funding millions of acres of regenerative farming in America, which is really exciting to me. You know, maybe it's greenwashing, but I don't think so. I think they recognize that their supply chain is threatened by the way we grow food and so they want to keep having the raw materials.

Walmart did the same thing a while ago. They said we want more organic stuff and like, oh wait, if we bought as much organic cotton as we want, we would buy more than is made in the world. Therefore we have to change the world to make the stuff we want to buy. That's right. So the power of big business to realize we won't buy industrial animals that deplete the soil and we won't buy plants grown on depleted soil. They will have to, to stay in business, do what's right for the planet and what's right for us. Just make food that's worth eating.

Absolutely. And Walmart is the biggest organic grocer in America. People don't know that. So, so one, it regenerates the, the health of the planet and the soil and the animal. It's all good on that. But what's even more interesting is the, is the role of this type of farming in generating much more nutrient dense food for us humans. And that has these phytochemicals that literally can reverse disease and produce food, real food that's good for us and good for the planet. So this is the win, win, win, win win across the game. It's good for the farmers who are squeezed between the banks and the agrochemical companies and the crop insurance and the government. It's good for the ecosystems that regenerate and bring back pollinator species. It brings back conserves water resources that are depleted around the world. It builds soil which we're losing at an incredibly accelerated rate. So it's got a win, win, win. And it generates products and food products that are more n, more healthy. So Gabe Brown and his farm, they've been testing their carrots and their vegetables and they have far more phytochemicals than the traditional farms. And what's even more amazing, I literally just got an article in my inbox this, this week about how, and I have a chapter here about is is meat medicine basically. And as I know it's a kind of title. I know it's going to be a little provocative. I mean, and what's so fun about it is that I've been learning from guys like Fred Provenza, who's a rangeland scientist, who's working with scientists at Duke University and actually analyzing the differences in phytonutrient content. And I said this right? Phytonutrient content in meat that's grown regeneratively. And what that means is that if the animals are foraging on wild plants or on lots of different varieties, like 100 different varieties of various plants, each of which has its own phytonutrient content and composition, each of which has very unique vitamins or minerals or other compounds, the animals seek this out. So the animals are smart, they know how to eat for nourishment, they know how to eat for health. So they're literally eating their medicine and finding it and eating the drugs that they need on the farm so they can stay healthy. And as a consequence, these compounds get incorporated into their meat. And when you eat them, you're getting the same thing. And some of these animals have as high phytochemical content as the plants that they're eating. If you were just to eat the.

Plants, it's really different. On my farm, our sheep walk around and we have forest here, they eat whatever they want. So they'll eat a little bit of rosemary, I call that inner basting, but they'll eat a couple bites of, you know, pine, which is anti parasitic, but they'll go and they'll, they'll muzzle it. And if instead you take animals in a compressed air and you pour a bunch of mixed up food into a trough, they don't get to do that. And the difference is that when we put the meat in a local market, someone will come and they'll buy some of it and they'll come in the next day and they'll buy all of it. Because, like, that is the best meat I've ever had. I felt so good when I ate it. So I'm actually opening a restaurant in the middle of the pandemic in Victoria, downstairs from my office in a little while. And we're actually going to take the animals that we raise ourselves and use them in the restaurant. Because you get a food high when you eat. An animal that ate what it was supposed to eat was treated kindly throughout its entire life. It's not even in the same universe as an industrial steak from the store.

Totally.

But most people have never felt the difference.

No, I did. In One of the studies, I quoted the movie in Australia, they did a study with kangaroo meat, which they have abundance of there, and compared it to feedlot meat. Same, you know, ounce rounds of protein, profoundly different effects on the body. The feedlot meat causes inflammation. The kangaroo meat reduced inflammation. And so wait a minute, how does that possible? Why? It's the information in food, it's the instructions that are programming your biology. So quality is really important. And in the book, I go through every bit of food we eat. You know, what, what protein and, and fats and carbohydrates, you know, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, chicken, fish, meat. What you should be eating in each of these categories because a feedlot beef is very different than wild elk. Right. A wild blueberry is different than a, you know, I don't know, some, some horrible, like starchy tomato that's grown in a hot house that has no nutrients in it, it tastes like carbon. Right.

You said blueberries. Even those. If you're not comparing it to some random tomato. If you get the normal industrial blueberries from, from factory farms that grow blueberries and there are such things versus I live in the Pacific Northwest, I buy a couple hundred pounds of blueberries at the height of the season from a local regenerative grower and they taste like blueberries. And we freeze them and we hoard them because they're so good. And if you go to the store and buy a little shrunken baggie of whatever, they don't taste like blueberries, they taste like something else. And what we have here is it's legal and considered normal to say, well, if it looks like a tomato, it's a tomato. But just because the outer layer looks like a tomato, the inside is completely different based on how it was treated. But we don't have standards or way to tell. How would you suggest that listeners know whether they're eating the good stuff versus stuff that looks like the good stuff?

Well, you know, there are ways to sort of ensure a little higher quality nutrient density. One is source your food from the right vendors, right?

Yes.

Farmer's markets, community supportive agriculture, online resources. For example, regenerative food like Tribe Market has incredible sources of regenerative meat and sustainably harvested or you know, low toxin fish, for example. So there, there's vital choice seafood that again, sources their fish from really great Alaskan waters that are small fish. And so there, there are ways to get these things. It's a little bit more work and a little bit more detective work. Also eat weird food. And I go to the Farmers farm like weird. What is that? I never see that before. I can eat some of that bitter melon or what is that fruit or. And I, and I'm sort of always trying to eat weird, strange food because the more wild, the less commercially raised it is, the more weird it is, the better it is for you. And so I, I, I've got on the, behind me a whole like tray of fruit from Hawaii and I, I stuff there. I've never eaten, eaten before. I'm like, what is that?

I'll warn you, jackfruit is gross. No matter how much you torture it, it still is not meat when you eat it. The, the information signal from jackfruit will never be meat.

Yeah, yeah.

Jack prune.

And there's breadfruit and there's, I don't even know. There's all kinds.

Breadfruit's awesome. And that's a feature.

So I think, I think we are really, you know, able to sort of be a little more diligent when you go to the grocery store, buy, you know, buy stuff that is, is sort of a little more funky. Like, you know, get, get mustard greens, you know, get dandelion greens, get things you don't normally would eat, eat seaweed. These are, these are just ways of picking out things when you go to the grocery store that aren't these big commercial products. So there are ways to do it. It's a little trickier, but, but you want it, you want color, you want variety, you want organic, when possible. Regenerative, you can get it. There's a new regenerative organic certification that Rodale and Patagonia are putting together. So there's, it's coming, it's coming. This is coming. And there are more and more farms that are converting to regenerative agriculture. So it's going to take time, but you literally can transform your diet by starting to sort of widen out your palate by exploring different foods. I mean, I got these, I got these bitter melon greens which are really wild, and I got the bitter, you know, from, from the farmer's market. You just don't see that stuff, right? Or, or I'll get, you know, these weird different mushrooms and things that are just kind of funny. And I, I tend to try to include as many of those things as possible. Variety is key because like those, those cows that are foraging on a hundred different plants, we need to forage on a wide variety of foods. I mean, the carnivore diet can help a lot of people with chronic disease because it eliminates Stuff, it's not so much about the meat, it's about what else they're not eating.

Right?

They're not.

Thank you for saying that.

Right. They're not, they're not eating dairy, they're not eating gluten, they're not eating greens, they're not eating beans, they're not eating sugar, they're not having lectins, they're not having all these inflammatory foods in their diet and they're taking out all the hormones, the antibiotics and the pesticides and the, and all the weird crap. I mean, hopefully they're eating grass fed meat but you know, it's like, yes, but it may not be the meat. And then long term it's going to be.

I'm with you.

Long term it's going to be a problem. What?

So I've said the same thing. And what all foods have in them is they have energy. And in the traditional American farm, you know, agricultural lobby industry, energy is the only thing that matters. It's calories, as if that's somehow the most important thing. But we do have to have some.

Energy from our food.

Then it has the good stuff, the nutrients, the signaling phytochemicals, the polyphenols, the vitamins, minerals. And then it has stuff that's not.

Good for you in it.

And depending on how you prepare the food and how you grow the food and all that, it can have more of the bad stuff or less of the bad stuff. And yeah, when you go carnivore, you remove all the bad stuff plants are doing to people, whether they're bad plants or good plants, whatever else. But then you eventually find, you know, I tolerate some plants really well but that plant's not compatible with me. And that's been kind of the core of what I've been doing. On the bulletproof side, it's like, look, find the foods that work for you. It's not the same for everyone. And I think in the vegan diet you've become really programmatic about it. Like, it's fine. You might do so well on red bell peppers because they're full of parenthocyanins. Me, they give me rheumatoid arthritis. Like I'm never going. It doesn't mean they're good or bad, it means they're compatible or not compatible.

Yeah, like I love raw onions and I love raw garlic, but if I eat it, I feel like crap. I get a brain fog headache, I don't know what to do, I don't touch these stuff. Some people have reactions Cooked onions and garlic are fine. So. And sometimes I'll go on the garlic because I just love raw garlic and I'll put in something, but you know, I have a little bit, it's okay. But I think, I think everybody needs to understand what is their particular biology. And so the ideology and dogma that we have has really kind of usurped common sense and science. And so the take home should be let your biology rule over your ideology. See what works for you. If you, if you go vegan and you lose your period and you have no sex drive and your muscle mass goes down and you're tired all the time and you're kind of, you know, want to stay in all the time and hide, that's not good. But if you're in rich roll and you're like running tribe, you know, ironman triathlons that you figured out to do it, go for it.

People get really angry, like, ah, you have to eat the way I eat. And I'm like, I, I would recommend.

People do eat the way I eat.

Which is don't eat the stuff that makes you weak and then eat the stuff that makes you strong and eat enough calories at the right time there.

Eat the way I eat.

That's it. And within that algorithm is very different.

It is. And there's a little bit of homework that has to be done. I go through how do you personalize your diet in the book. But within that, within that there are foundational principles of how do you choose quality and the best information in every bit of food you eat. And then how do you personalize it and how do you optimize all your functional systems? Because as a functional medicine doctor, I don't treat disease. The body is structured in a way that has nothing to do with the way medicine is organized right now. Medicine is organized in specialties. You've got your cardiologist, gastrologist, rheumatologist, your neurologist, your dermatologist. You got an ologist for every part of your body and nobody talks to each other. And people often have multiple things, they call them comorbidities, which means you have multiple diseases, which is absolutely nonsense because they're all connected. If you have migraines and rheumatoid arthritis and irritable bowel reflux and you have rashes and you have headaches, it's not just a random bunch of bad luck that you got all these things. They're connected underneath by common mechanisms of inflammation and dysbiosis and other other factors. And so Functional medicine is about how do you optimize these systems. So I never treat disease, I optimize these functional systems. And it turns out the biggest influence on these seven dynamic functional systems that are your biological network, your ecosystem, the most important influence on these is food for bad or good, right?

Yep.

Right.

So for example, what percentage is it? 80, 90%.

I mean I think it's probably like yeah, about upwards of 80%. I mean if you look at, you know, there's a class of things that are not food related. So I've had those, I'm good with diet, but I've had stuff that's taken me down.

If you're living in toxic mold and automobile exhausts, it doesn't matter what you eat, you're probably not going to like it.

Yeah. So Dave, you know you helped me when I almost died a few four years ago from mold toxicity in my house and I, after I, you know, been your movie about mold and after like I knew and I just collapsed and, and so, you know, I could eat all the great food I want. It wasn't helping. Or yeah, you know, I, I had mercury poisoning. You know, that's not going to get sorted out by you know, eating better. I mean yes, you have to cut out the swordfish and all that and eat vegetables that up regulate your detox. But it's really about, you know, finding those things that are real triggers but absent that, you know, like Lyme disease, tick infections, mold, mercury, environmental toxins, all that. Yes, parasites, gut stuff. Yes, you have to need a little extra help. But for most of the problem that's facing America today, and by the way Dave, we are, we are in a real pickle. Why is Covid so prevalent in America? It's not just because we eat a.

Lot of omega 6 plant based fats and a lot of sugar and a lot of crap. That's my assumption. Do you agree or is there something else going on?

Yeah, yes, I agree. I think what's happened is people don't understand is that America is one of the unhealthiest nations in the world and Covid kills you by inflammation and we are all pre inflamed. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. That means they have some form of prediabetes, insulin resistance, poor health from their metabolism. When you have that, that's an inflammatory state. That's nine out of 10Americans, even people who are just a little overweight, a little bit of belly fat, seem to have higher risk of severe illness and death from COVID So it's not like you have to be £300. You could be just a little or even. Not even overweight, but just more belly fat. And I think we're in a situation where we haven't even talked about that in America. We're talking about vaccines and masking and social distancing. I'm like, wait a minute. There's a lot we can do aside from nutraceutical interventions, which like vitamin D and zinc and vitamin C and quercetin and green tea and nec and a lot of things can really help, but the food is such a big, big, big, big, big thing. And I. I think that we just kind of are missing the boat here. And America, if I were president, I would say. I would say, listen, America, get off your crappy diet. You're all getting the quarantine 15. Or the COVID 19 pounds. Like freshman 15. This is not the time to comfort, eat, to drink, to not take care of your health because you're just a sitting duck. When Covid lands on a pre inflamed person, it actually causes a super fire called the cytokine storm, which is what kills us.

So are you saying that. That throughout all of human history, diseases.

Take out the weak first?

I. Yes.

It's such a radical thought. I mean, no one's ever thought of that before, but, yeah, we've done things to ourselves to make ourselves weak. And our ideology says that we haven't, but our biology says that we have.

You know, to.

To use some of the words you've been using. And so let's say that someone reads the vegan diet tomorrow and they start adding pomegranates and the Himalayan buckwheat and all the other good stuff in. How long does it take to turn the inflammation dial back down?

Oh, my God, Dave. This is what's shocking. Like, it's shocking to me. I mean, it takes. It takes, like, decades often to get sick, and it can take days to get better. Yes, exactly. Like, I'm like, you wake up the.

Next morning, your joints don't hurt. Like, what did I just do? Well, you didn't eat the popcorn.

One guy came in after doing, you know, the program that's very similar to the pig and diet. He's like, doctor, I been on 10 years and 10 days, and I go like, all my joint pains on. Is that possible? I have rheumatoid arthritis. You know, another woman, after being in a psychiatric hospital for depression, multiple medications, or marriage and job are falling apart like, every three days. Of changing my diet. My depression is lifted for the first time in my life. This is a woman who spent a lot of her life in psychiatric hospitals and on piles of pills. Another woman came to one of our shared medical appointments at Cleveland Clinic who had type 2 diabetes, heart failure and hypertension. And she had multiple stents and she had this. And she had kidney failure and liver failure. I mean it was like a mess. She was on her way to a heart transplant and kidney transplant. Three days, Three days she was off her insulin. Three days, three months, it was off everything. Kidneys reversed, liver reversed, heart failure reversed, which never happens. Okay. This doesn't happen in traditional medicine. You manage this as a chronic disease. You don't cure or reverse. I had multiple patients with heart failure, but we reversed using food as medicine and a few extra nutraceuticals. But this woman very to baiting. Three days she was off everything. She lost I think 43 pounds in, in three months by a year. She lost 116 pounds from, you know, like she was a body mass. Six of 483. And she was on, she was 66 on her way out. And she's, you know, back in the game. And I think we, we don't understand the power. And when I, when I, when I have people do the 10 days of just really clean eating, like a, like a reboot or reset. 10 day reset. 62% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. Migraines, irritable balance, somnia, depression, joint pain, reflux, whatever it is you got, it fixes. And it's like if it was a pill that could do that, it would be a trillion dollar blockbuster, right? Be a trillion dollar. So I don't, I, I'm, I'm willing to use whatever it takes to help my patients. I don't care if it's exercise or exorcism, I'll use it. I'm not opposed to medication or drugs. And I use them in the right way for the right person at the right time, the right dose for the right indication. But most of the time I don't need them because food is way more powerful a drug than most pharmaceuticals because they work with the body rather than against it. They actually activate the body's own healing mechanisms like we talked about. Like the akkermansia for your microbiome gets activated by certain foods. Or the Himalayan tartary buckwheat helps your zombie cells. Or the, or the urolithin A in pomegranate that causes your mitochondria to Rebuild and to build muscle. So. So we have the intelligence to do this. So it's not just about treating disease. It's not just about not having symptoms. It's the opposite. The way you get to health is not by treating disease. The way you get to health is by creating health. That is the science of functional medicine. It's otherwise known as biohacking.

What the researchers did, this was published in the journal Food and Nutrition Research. And they took test subjects and gave them a meal of processed foods and a meal of whole foods to see how their metabolism was, would respond. Okay, caveat. The meal of whole foods was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese. All right? This was deemed to be the whole food meal. It's a little holer.

All right?

It's a little holer versus the processed food meal, which was white bread and cheese product, which that's Kraft Singles, essentially. And it's not legally cheese. It's called Kraft Singles because there's not enough cheese in the cheese. All right? So test subjects ate these various sandwiches and they tracked all their metrics. And by the way, on paper, they should be the same sandwich. The same metabolic impact. They're the same amount of calories, the same amount of fats. Yeah, same amount of calories. Fats, proteins, carbohydrate. On paper, they're the same. Now, here's what happened. After consuming the processed food sandwich, they had a 50% reduction in calorie expenditure, in calorie burn in the expellation of energy post eating that sandwich versus when they ate the whole food sandwich. Something got clogged up where the body was not releasing energy as efficiently. So much so again, 50% reduction. And so in this conversation, when we say, you know, a calorie is a calorie, like, we're so we shouldn't be having that shouldn't even be talked about anymore. We're so far beyond that. How many studies do we need to know that the quality of food that you're eating matters and eating fake food? But right now, in the United States, we have the average adult, their diet is about 60% ultra processed foods. Now, this is leaving out, and this is from the cdc, this is leaving out the point that for our children, it's about 67% ultra processed foods. We're feeding our children garbage, fake food and wondering why Childhood obesity. Childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 to 40 years. It is insane.

It's funny, if I had to choose from those, those study groups, I actually.

Would eat the white bread and the cheddar cheese.

Now I'm sensitive to casein and to gluten, so this would not be great for me. But the whole wheat bread had a whole bunch of stuff in it. Yeah, it had more fiber, but it also had way more phytic acid and other enzyme inhibitors. Cuz whole foods are not provably better. In fact, you don't eat the shell of the walnut.

Whole food diets don't actually exist. They don't make sense.

Just because you could eat it doesn't mean you should. Did you eat the whole tree that grew the apple? Well, where whereas the edge of whole food was even mean you shouldn't eat the apple seeds. They contain cyanide and they actually enough to harm horses. So like let's just throw out that idea of whole foods as being nonsense.

Because it can't even be defined.

But in, in that example, you're getting saturated fat which is prometabolic from the cheese and you're getting omega 6 fat which is anti metabolic as is shown in the reduction of calories from the fake cheese. So we have a problem here. And if you see the bullies online with a million followers who spend all day saying you can cancel out a Snickers bar with a diet soda, these people, either they're evil or they're just so traumatized that they are willing to ignore vast swaths of data that have existed for more than a hundred years.

That say a calorie is not a calorie.

So I, I love it that you're on, on team. Look at what you eat instead of team. You know you can sweat away a.

Potato chip because I don't think that's.

Real potato chip sweat. Dave, come on. There's so many nuggets in this episode already. All right, so this is a great point for us to all make as a community. For us to start to open up our minds and keep it within. We don't have to articulate this every time we talk about it, but there's a distinction between ultra processed foods and processed foods. Minimally processed foods like that we've been doing for thousands upon thousands of years. Extra virgin. Extra virgin olive oil. Thousands upon thousands. It's in biblical texts and all these different ancient scriptures, it's engraved in pyramids. All right, this has been around a long time. How do you do it? You crush olives. It's processed now, cold processed. If it's done correctly, it's a cold processing. And now we have something. Researchers at Auburn University found that oleocanthal rich Extra virgin olive oil is one of the few foods that helps reduce neuroinflammation. It had some kind, they still haven't pinned down why it has this action, but it's acting upon the blood brain barrier, helping to heal it, helping to repair the blood brain barriers. The specific words that they use that blood brain barrier is what's getting damaged and allowing in, you know, this concept of a leaky brain, allowing compounds that shouldn't be in, in your brain into your brain and creating more neuro inflammation. And by the way, this was from researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And this is a huge topic, a big takeaway from today. What they, what they found in their research was that neuroinflammation is one of the biggest catalysts in our obesity epidemic. They stated that inflammation in the brain, specifically hypothalamic inflammation, was creating more insulin resistance and leading to excessive amounts of body fat. And that excessive amount of body fat and insulin resistance was creating more inflammation in the brain. So it's creating this vicious circle that people are fighting, trying to count their calories and you know, Jenny Craig in it and still eating processed food and not getting out of that loop. Nobody's telling people that you have to reduce the inflammation in your brain in order to help the situation sort itself out more gracefully. What can we do? What would be considered a processed food, right, Olive oil is added to the mix. Not saying that this is the end all be all. I don't have a dog in the fight. I honestly wouldn't. I don't care if olive oil is great or not, but just based on the data and based on history, again, thousands of years versus canola oil that's made by Vinnie at the factory like 40 years ago or whatever. You know, let's just err on the side of what we've been doing the longest and also not villainize the, the, the term processed food, right? Because there's a big difference between ultra processed food, which is taking corn at some point, it through the addition of various types of sugar, artificial flavors, artificial colors, it becomes lucky charms. All right, that is an ultra processed food. It's lost all resonance with anything that even came from the earth.

And if you think about is processing evil. Let me tell you about one of my favorite superfoods. So you pick it. Most people let it sit for two days in river water, then you put it in the sun, then you dry it in a big heater, then you roast it, then you grind it, then you pour hot water on it, then you Extract it, then you blend it with butter and then you blend it with an extract of coconut oil called MCT oil that's made by fractionating the oil oil and then you drink it.

It's called bulletproof coffee.

Right. That is processed all to hell, guys. And it works really, really well. And if you were to say in the very latest step of the whole evolution of what I. I've been doing coffee, you could do the danger coffee, where you have minerals that are layered into the process as well. It's processed, processed, processed. And so when you barbecue your steak, it's a processed thing. Fire processed. So we can all just say process isn't bad. Ultra processed is bad. And some processes are better than others. And we can just be non dogmatic and curious about it. And that's, that's the approach in your book that you have where it just, it makes sense. And even olive oil, what you're talking about there, a new study, and I don't think it was the same one you're referencing, found that inside your neurons they actually can make oleic acid, which is what's most present in olive oil, and that it's contributing to BDNF and neurogenesis. So it's likely that eating it, although that study didn't support eating it directly, probably helps. And we know hydroxy tyrosol, which is the primary, most potent antioxidant in olive oil, may be a part of that. But like you said, I think fixing the inflammation in my brain as a guy who had Asperger's and ADHD and OCD and toxic mold exposure, and now I'm on the board of Amen clinics with Daniel. Amen.

Yes.

Thanks, man. But like, my brain was so inflamed and it probably still is a little bit, but I think that's a part of my 100 pounds of weight loss, was fixing my brain. And no one's talking about that as a weight loss thing that I'm aware of, except for you. So kudos, man.

That's.

Thank you.

That's a very solid point. You know, hypothalamus is in the brain.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Dave. And so by the way, the hypothalamus, it's received the term over the years of the master gland. And what it really is, it's an integration point for our endocrine system and our nervous system.

Right.

And it's responsible for so much regarding, we'll just say the management of caloric energy, of managing our body temperature, of managing our stress hormones. Sleep, appetite, it's involved in so much. But here's the key in why this, this connection with weight loss is, is really valuable with the hypothalamus is that it's kind of like an internal thermostat in a sense of your, your quote, metabolic rate. Like how much energy are you expending? It's not just because, like, it's not just because I have muscle on my frame. It's all integrating itself, that data with the hypothalamus. It's important. And what if we have inflammation in this part of the brain and it's just not working right? Like the data is just everything is going to be discombobulated. What if we can stack conditions in our favor? And because I was talking with you today, I actually went and looked up head to head MCT oil versus LCTs. All right, this, this was in the book as well. This was a randomized double blind study. This was published in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders. And they had participants on a reduced calorie diet that either included supplemental MCTs or LCTs. After the data was compiled, it was revealed that a group who included mcts lost more weight, lost more body fat and experienced higher levels of satiety. All right, Nothing else different in their diet, they're on the same diet. Just the inclusion of supplemental MCTs. All right, so like Dave said, there is something really remarkable about it.

MCT oil is now a billion dollar industry category. But the guy who did most of the research and some of it came out actually after I started saying look, you can feel it, you don't need the research. But a lot of the post launch of bulletproof research came from Dr. Cunain at UC San Diego. He's the guy who came up with a study that showed two cups of coffee's worth of caffeine doubles ketone production. He's the guy who showed that C8MCTs raise ketones more than the rest of the MCTs. Um, that was five years after I launched C8MCT as working better, even though there was no study. But he proved why it worked better.

Because it was more ketogenic than the other ones.

So what, what you'll find is that you can feel whether something works. All of this came about because in the 90s, this anti aging group that I eventually ran in Silicon Valley, they found one paper and said oh, coconut oil is more satisfying. So they re imported coconut oil to the US because you couldn't buy coconut oil in 1992. It wasn't at health food stores. So they brought like 55 gallon drums in for their own use. And suddenly now coconut oil is a health food, whatever it was 30 years later. So we could feel it, but we didn't have the science. And what's happening now and what you've got in Eat Smarter, your new book is you've compiled some of this newest science like that, and you can say, all right, maybe you just felt something or maybe there was a study, but if you feel it, your goal, as you said earlier, is do you feel better, do you have more energy and do you look the way you want to look? So I love the blend of science and data that you're putting in the book. End result is it's not are you.

A study, it's how'd you show up today?

Yes, yes, precisely.

We haven't talked about thyroid, though. That's the other part of your book which made me very happy. Talk to me about thyroid as a metabolic switch.

Awesome. So we tend to say the HPA axis, right? Hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis, but along this superhighway there are a lot of other organs, and one of those being the thyroid. So it's in close, intimate contact with everything else in our bodies. The thyroid is very obviously metabolically active, but because of its, because of its charge in a way, it tends to attract, and I'm gonna lean on you for this as well, a lot of environmental toxicants, a lot of environmental pollutants, pollutants would find their home within the thyroid. And that's unfortunate. And why, again, we're seeing so much with thyroid dysfunction. It's just our exposure. And the best thing that we can do on that front, of course, is cleaning up our organs of detoxification. The liver, the kidneys are going to be super important in this and supporting your thyroid. We don't tend to think about that when our thyroid is abnormal and malfunctioning. We tend to just try to target the thyroid. Let me just take this thing and try to beat it into submission when it's really about, you know, what's happening upstream and downstream. And so, yeah, so it's a big role player, obviously. So having that data, kind of the government, I don't want to put the hypothalamus in the governor position, especially I live in la, so the governor position is a little sketchy. But, you know, it does have an. It has the ability to oversee a lot of things. The, our metabolism itself, if there is A gland in our body that really carries the weight of that. Little pun intended. It's our thyroid. And so doing what we can to stack conditions in our favor for good thyroid health. And I know a lot of listeners have had their thyroid removed in one way or another or they're on medication for this. And this is not to villainize anything or any type of treatment, but where you are right now, you have the ability to stack conditions in your favor and to, and to work with what you have. But this is also a nudge to everybody else. Like, this is serious business. Thyroid disease abnormalities, dysfunctions are still on the rise. This is not. We're nowhere near out of the water with this. So it's like a big call to arms for us to get as healthy as we can.

One of the things that's happening that's near and dear to me is that environmental toxic mold. And guys, moldymovie.com is my free documentary, a professional full length documentary on mold, no cost. Moldymovie.com when you breathe these things, I don't know, maybe there's a hurricane that blows through and you get water damage. It triggers your body, not always, but a very meaningful amount of time triggers your body to attack your own thyroid gland. It causes Hashimoto's thyroiditis and it can.

Sensitize you to gluten and casein and things like that.

So if your immune system is going after your thyroid, which is your thermostat, that's one of these causes. Plus you get all these things that poison the thyroid, like bromine, which is in flour and the other things you're writing about in your book, like fluoride, and you end up with, oh, it doesn't work very well. I have been on thyroid replacement hormone, bioidentical thyroid, just like I've been on bioidentical testosterone because my body wasn't making it right. I've been doing both of those since I was 26 because I was that sick. There is no moral failing for having the hormones of a 25 year old when you're 125.

In fact, you will not make it.

To 125 if you don't. So there's no negative judgment. If you're over 40 and you haven't had a thyroid panel, you were doing it wrong. If you're over 40 and your thyroid isn't freaking perfect and you're not on thyroid hormone, you're probably doing it wrong. Maybe you can do it naturally with tyrosine and iodine, but it's okay if, you know what, I'm just going to live a long time and feel great. Right now I'm on a small dose of thyroid because that's what my body needed. Just do it like, you'll love it and you'll keep the outer part of your eyebrows that I don't have because.

I was low on thyroid for so long.

What did I say wrong there, Sean?

Oh man, it's so powerful. Dave, thank you so much for bringing this up because everything should be an option. Today more than ever, we get into these diet camps and we're infighting about minutia. And especially if we're not in the kind of conventional medical paradigm we tend to think like all medication is off the table and that can be a problem as well. There are wonderful drugs that have come, come across in recent decades that should be on the table as an option. Don't, don't defeat yourself or abuse yourself and not access something that can dramatically improve your quality of life and your lifespan because of a diet dogma or, or a small minded belief system.

Right.

Innovation. Part of this innovation is part of our evolution. However, with that said, as Dave reiterates as well, it's about stacking conditions with the big movers as well. So it's not just the thyroid medication, it's these other things too. I'm a healthy person, I'm doing healthy shit. I'm in great relationships. I am taking care of my body, I'm doing the cold plunge. What we tend to do, I think is we tend to get into this again, this dogmatic perspective where I'm using a blanket treatment. That's not what you're doing. You're stacking conditions. You're stacking conditions and you're talking about a big mover when you're talking about your thyroid. That's a big deal. So with that said, I want to go back to a place of simplicity because with all of these tissues that we're talking about organs and organelles, when it really boils down to it, all of these things are literally made from the food that you eat. It's all made from the food that you eat. And we're existing in a paradigm of healthcare where, and you know this, Dave, you know, like some of the top cardiologists in the world, gastroenterologists and neuro, neurologists and you know, whatever. Ologist. Ologist, ologist. And they go to school for 12 years to learn about their particular field of expertise. These are my friends and colleagues learning about the heart, learning about surgery, learning about, you know, your arteries, all this different stuff, very mechanical thinking. When they're looking at your heart, they are unaware that switch has not been turned off, that they're looking at the food that you ate. It's just not a part of their reality. Now some of our friends and colleagues who've worked on themselves and really started to look outside of their conventional training, which takes food out of the equation, which is criminal, because you're fucking made of food. You're literally made of food.

Yes.

So to have that switch turned on, to see, like the art, my patient's arteries are made from the food they're eating. Their blood within those arteries is made from the food that they're eating.

We have.

It is required, it is square one for us to pay attention to this stuff.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

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