Protect Your Last Line Of Defense with Dr. Greg Wells

Foreign.

Hi, everybody, it's Eric Edmeads back here with another episode, and this time I've brought with me a very good friend, Dr. Greg Wells. And, you know, Greg, here's what's crazy is, you know, I'm sure it's the same for you, but we go out into the world and meet all kinds of amazing people because we, you know, are speakers and, you know, we're on stage and stuff, and then we become friends with people, and then often we become friends with them not understanding who they really are, you know, And I'm kind of making a comment here about, you know, we've been at events together. What country did we randomly bump into each other in?

It was Lithuania.

Lithuania?

Yeah. Crazy.

It was absolutely crazy. And so we have that experience, but then this crisis comes along, and immediately I'm having this conversation about who are the right people that I can bring in to talk about. My core message here is, how do we cope with, survive and thrive through this difficult time? And I was talking to Sherry Skeens, and she immediately said, hey, we gotta talk to Greg. And I'm like, of course we should talk to Greg. Then our team does a bunch of research, and turns out you're like a superhero. I mean, I knew you were a superhero.

You know, that's funny.

It's one of these things that, like, as I say, we get to know people and, you know, if I had been in the audience for all these years, seeing you, I would know a lot more. But it's really. I'm honored to have you here. I'm really up for a frank conversation. My core focus of these episodes is, as I said, to help people find strategies for coping, surviving, and thriving through this. And I think where you probably plug in here most is in order to do any of those three things, we got to take care of our health. We got to make sure our immune systems are operating really well. We got to make sure our minds are operating. So jump in and say hello, and let's take it from there.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Eric, thank you so much for having me on. And you're right. Like, we've been at events together, a couple of events, and sat in the conference rooms for four or five days and shot the shit. And then all of a sudden, we bump into each other, and random building. I don't even remember the name of the town. But anyway, it was in Lithuania, Had a great dinner at some hotel, and here we are in the middle of a crisis, trying to help.

And somehow, through all that, you managed to, you know, you managed. Not to mention that you've published 65 scientific journals, raised over a million bucks in research, written three best selling books, have another one on the way, done TEDx talk. You managed to skip a lot of that.

All right, so let's do the like the. I'll do the 92nd origin story. Competitive swimmer growing up for the Canadian youth team on a training camp in Florida when I was 15, broke my neck and went through three months of traction neurosurgery. Managed to come back to competitive swimming. Made Olympic trials and World cup level type stuff. All my friends made the Olympics. I didn't, but sort of that kind of level. Got through university, took kinesiology because I got interested in the human body through all of that. Started a consulting company right after university, did incredibly well in a very short period of time. And then about two years in, I submitted a bill to someone at a bank because I was doing consulting for executives. It's like 22 years old. And she looked at the invoice and then she looked at me and she said, what are your qualifications? And I was like a phys ed degree. She goes, you need to go back to school. So I went back and did a master's and PhD. Then I did a postdoc at Sick Kids Hospital, another postdoc in biomedical engineering at Toronto General which involved the US Marines, which was super cool. Through all of that time I consulted with Canadian Olympic team as a physiologist. So I worked with over 200 Olympic athletes. Commentated 2010 and 2012 Olympics for Canadian television that launched a speaking career. Speaking career prompted the creation of a consulting company. The consulting company has exploded and all of that was leading right up until Friday of last week. And here we are and the world has changed and we're sort of navigating from here. But anyway, that's the, that's the short form story about 60ish. We got about 10, 15 more papers. My goal is to hit 75 papers on PubMed research papers. And yeah, I was a tenured profit U of T. Still a research scientist at Sick Kids Hospital and Translational Medicine. So lots of stuff going on. But yeah, who knew three weeks ago.

That competitive swimming was going to become a solo sport.

You know, it's funny where I was just talking to my buddy this morning. I live on a lake in Toronto and it's March, it's still cold, but like I'm ordering a wetsuit. I'm ordering like, because I'm not swimming in any pool anytime soon. So we're going to go swimming in the lake and load up on all of the gear to be able to do so. So, yeah, here we go.

Okay, listen, here's what I'm really interested in. Let's start with this. In the green room, right before we kind of went live, you said something that I think a lot more people need to be willing to say. I'm willing to say it. You're willing to say you said, I've been wrong about just about everything so far. And I finally kind of woken up to this. Talk to me about that a little bit.

Yeah. So I'm a respiratory physiologist. That's like my hardcore physiology training. Right. So I'm watching this and I have been watching it for the whole time. And, you know, I'll freely admit that when I looked at the data early on, I was like, well, it's a slightly more severe version of the flu. It looks like it's probably around three times as lethal and probably higher transmission rates. And. But I was like, I don't think this is nearly as big of a deal as everyone's making it out to be. And I know that, that looking back now, I'm like, that's the stupidest thing I could have possibly said. And probably damaging. And it may have actually cost lives so rapidly since over the last probably seven days, I'd say, having consumed as much scientific data as I could, I'm being very careful about what media I consume at the moment so I don't get caught up in the random hysteria of the Internet. I have come to the conclusion that this is quite severe. The lethality is such that there, if we don't deal with it aggressively and quickly, that hundreds of thousands of people could die. And so my perspective on it has changed massively. My family is, you know, we're in our home. We're prepared to stay here for a very, very, very long time. And we're in lockdown, and I hope the rest of the world does it soon, too. And I know that might be really offensive to a lot of people that are, you know, out there. Although if you're listening to the show, probably not, but we've got to do it. And my perspective has changed. And I was completely wrong even as early as, like last Friday, I was sitting around with a couple of my friends and one of the guys, like, I think this is going to get really bad. And I was like, I don't know. Now I'm like, it's going to be really bad. And I Messed up. I made a mistake. I was wrong.

Greg, I'm with you. One of the things I've been saying a lot online, one of my little catchphrases about this whole event is that the only thing more dangerous than hysteria is denial. And unfortunately, I think in this case, denial is the more dangerous end of the spectrum. You know, I remember seeing Tim Ferriss petitioning the mayor of Austin to close down south by Southwest. And frankly, I thought he was on the hysteria end of the spectrum at that.

Yeah.

But about a few days after that, I quickly woke up to what was going on, and then I became one of the hysterical people. I posted some things on Instagram about isolation and about taking care of your immune system. And, Greg, no kidding, for the first time, I've had constant Instagram growth for two years. I had my first Instagram dip. Like, I lost followers because I was hysterical. And of course, since then, I then released a video about what I called your last line of defense is one of the reasons I'm so glad you're here is because I believe that social distancing and all that stuff is the first lines of defense. That's the moat, it's the wall, it's the guards. But at the end of the day, the safe room is your body and your immune system. And I published a video about that. And in contrast with only a week earlier, where I lose followers over that same statement, now the video goes viral, and half a million people around the world are sharing it. You know, it's a different thing. So let's all understand. And I think that the message that I've really gotten out of this and really appreciate you saying that is, you know, a lot of people are critical of, you know, for example, President Trump saying, oh, it's not that big a deal. And then, of course, shutting down the borders and, you know, the left is not helping things when they attack him for changing tack. Now, I'm not saying he's handling this well at all. I'm just saying we've all made mistakes here. And what we, I think, can all get now is the more we all pay attention to the lockdown, the more we all pay attention to social distancing and not contribute to the spread of this anymore. Absolutely. The better. Agreed.

100%. Like, I'm pretty apolitical. I'm like, you know, very straight down the middle. I have voted on both sides of the aisle. And so I'm at this point, I think that if I look at what Trump actually said, it was probably wasn't too far off. The way he delivered it was probably could have been better anyway. So that aside, what we just need to do is follow the science. And the science is actually quite clear. We need to be socially isolating ourselves. We need to be doing that because it, quote, unquote, flattens the curve, which is a concept that everyone can understand. I don't think that that changes the number of people that get infected, but I do think that it decreases the rate by which infections are spread. Therefore, it will enable us to handle it in the medical system so that we're not overwhelmed, so we don't run out of respirators, and so that we can actually treat people. As I scratch my face, which you're not supposed to do anymore, but I'm alone in my house.

My rule is if I'm home, I've disinfected and washed my hands, I can touch my face all over the place.

That's right. Okay, there we go.

Three weeks from now, it's going to turn out that's wrong.

I know. And they're going to. This is going to go viral because look at these two idiots touching their faces.

It'll be attached right to the clip of that one NBA guy touching the microphones.

It'll be right there. So we'll do that one more time then. That's it. So I believe that social isolation is the right thing to do and for all of us. So our family has definitely, you know, we are socially isolating. We are loaded up, we got food, we got. We will go out to get fresh veggies as often as we can. We're going to take precautions around that we are exercising outdoors. We are, you know, maintaining 6 to 12ft distance from everybody else around me. I run on the beach, but not near anyone else. So we are doing all of that. That is absolutely critical. But then, as you say, the real line of defense is us. And I think that there's a lot of things that we can do to elevate our immune systems in this time and protect ourselves. They're all things that we should be doing anyway. So I'm hopeful that as we all work on these, this is what actually carries forwards after this crisis dissipates. And there's lots of things that we can do to stay healthy and connect with our family. And actually, I believe in emotional connection in a time of social isolation. I think that's also something that we could dig into. But, yeah, I agree with you completely on all of that.

Greg, let me ask you here's some observations that I've made. You know, we're seeing statistics out of Italy where you know, they're saying that maybe one of the reasons that it hit Italy as hard as it did is because Italy, Italy had one of the oldest populations and, and of course, so now there's all this like, well, it goes after the old people. But you know, I'm more and more of the opinion and I think more and more people are that it's not ageist, that it's healthist, that most of the people, it just happens to be that in our culture because of the way we live, by the time we get to our 60s, 70s and 80s, many of us are suffering with one or two major health problems already and that's what makes us more susceptible. Does that make sense to you?

It does make sense. So this however, I am going to clearly state that I am stepping out of research evidence and we are now sort of speculating based on logic and knowledge and experience because I don't have any data from research that shows that about what we're about to dive into. But I'll make a few comments just based on the fact that I'm a respiratory physiologist and I'm a PhD, not an MD so just so everyone understands that very, very clearly. Not providing medical advice here. But I think in Italy one of the unique things is that it's a culture whereby the young integrate and communicate and spend time with older people in the population. It's a much more age integrated society than North America, let's say. And so there's a possibility that that may have contributed perhaps to what's going on there. But I also think that our immune systems are hyper responsive to our overall health status. Obviously if you're in good health from a physiological fitness perspective, that improves the immune system. We know that a moderate amount of exercise improves immune function. A lack of exercise compromises immune function. Similarly, too much exercise compromises the immune system. It's a J shaped relationship. You want to be on the bottom part of the J. Good, consistent, moderate amount of exercise. Second thing that we know is that food has an impact on our immune system. So never before has it been more important for us to be eating healthy food and to really double down on eating the rainbow, really good berries that have lots of antioxidants and anti inflammatory compounds. Eating as organic as you can afford, all of these things make a huge difference. Now I'll actually just draw up something I got from Peter Diamandis in his future loop in which he summarized a few of the things that work. Zinc would be another one heavily involved in the immune system. And that's one that there's a great Cochrane review on. Vitamin C appears to shorten the duration of colds, not prevent colds, but shorten the duration of colds. There's another Cochrane review on that one. And so there's lots of different compounds that we can consider right now to just incorporate into our lives. But in a very, very simple way it's just H equals N over C. Health is equal to nutrients over calories. Sort of love that concepts. We're looking for nutrient dense foods right now, not calorie dense foods. And then the final piece of the puzzle that we're working on, exercise, nutrition, and the last one is sleep. Sleeping a lot right now we know that sleep has a powerful effect upon the immune system and overall health. So those are things that we can control right now. We can't control the spread of the virus around the world except by social isolation and taking care of. So we just need to all double down on our health and I think we should be doing that anyway. This might just be the kickstart that the world needs.

Greg, it's so interesting. When I first started writing, I wrote this thing about the last line of defense and then I put this thing out on Facebook and I had all these people attacking me and no kidding, doctors attacking me, writing to me going, you can't boost your immune system. Of course then they started talking about you wouldn't want to boost your immune response. And I'm not talking about that. I'm not suggesting that eating well is going to stop the virus from coming in. Anybody who understands this stuff wouldn't claim that, but they might claim that your body's reaction to it is going to be completely different if you're well nourished, hydrated, rested, have sunlight and all that stuff.

Right? Yeah, that's really interesting.

Yeah. The New York Times I saw just today is saying that, and this is not a nice statistic, they're saying that they're seeing a higher proportion of young people being hospitalized with corvid than in other countries. Germany had the same thing. Why is that? And I suspect, and I mean, I suspect it's because the young people in North America are eating fast food a lot. I mean, I don't mean just fast food, but not well nourished. And I think we're going to see that. And maybe one of the things that we wake up to after this is that our health is not Just some convenience that has to do with how we live out our days. It has to do with how we defend ourselves against these types of things.

Absolutely. And I think the really interesting thing is as we start to sort of hopefully vision forwards to 12 to 18 months as we come out the other side of this, and we talked earlier about like, is it actually going to be 12 to 18 months? And I think it probably will. But again, who knows? I've been wrong all along, so I could be wrong on that one too. But we really do need to understand the immune system a little bit better and not take it for granted and understand that it is controllable and you want the immune system to be operating at the right level. If the immune system is too active, obviously then you get autoimmune diseases, lupus and inflammatory conditions, arthritis. So when doctors say like, you don't want it overactive, of course they're right. You don't want it overactive, you don't want it underactive as well, because that's what gets you sick. And so when I'm in the medical world and I work at a hospital as a researcher, I'm integrated in oncology and I do research in cancer and cystic fibrosis are sort of my two areas where I spend most of my time. Where we're sort of landing is that healthy lifestyle prevents disease. And that's very different from treatment of disease once you are sick. So let's say cancer, if I have cancer, many different forms, all different diseases, so it varies. But if I have cancer, I want to speak to an oncologist, I want the chemo, I want the radiation because I have the disease. But if I don't have cancer and I want to prevent cancer, I'm not going to go speak to an oncologist. I don't want the hardcore drugs, I want the sleep, I want the vitamin D from sunlight, I want exercise, I want to be outdoors in nature, I want incredibly healthy food. And so as we build up our capacity to fuel our immune system and stay incredibly healthy in a balanced way right now, it really, if we are not sick, then absolutely we are going all in on all of these lifestyle factors as much as we can. And it's great that this is bringing this to our attention right now and we get to talk about it in such a way that it's hyper relevant and actionable and people might be motivated to do it now finally and make this part of our world, you know?

Yeah, I think that sometimes people need urgency. I mean, one of the reasons that we don't, as a population take care of our health is that the consequences are so deferred.

Right.

You know, that I can eat this thing here, this ice cream pizza, donut, whatever the case might be, I can eat this here and it'll give me some emotional boost in this moment. And, you know, maybe, yeah, it might contribute to me needing some surgery at some point in the future. But it's so far away. And you know how it is. The younger you are, the more immortal you feel. And then as we start getting older, we start going, ooh, maybe we got to pay more attention. But now what's happened is that I think this has been brought right here, like, right here today. If somebody decides to go and gorge themselves on a bunch of sugar and a bunch of junk right now, today, they make themselves weaker right now, today with an impending threat. And so I think people. That's one of the things I really want to get across, people. Greg, I saw this the other day, and of course, it's really tough to weed through the science and stuff, but I saw this about coronaviruses the other day, and I gather they're called coronaviruses because they have a shell. It's like a crown, corona being the crown. And I heard the other day that they propagate better in sugared blood, that they actually move better when there's blood sugar, like heavy blood sugar. Now, I want to do more research on that. But again, that absolutely fits with everything we've been talking about for all these years, that it's absolutely important that the body goes through these cycles where you go through ketogenic stages where you don't have such heavy blood sugar. So I don't know if you've seen anything about that or if you have any thoughts.

I haven't seen that. So it's interesting. I'm going to go look that up. And that's what's great about these conversations, is we kind of prompt each other to go exploring things. But back to that idea of how the viruses are constructed. I don't know about sugars, but I do know about soap. And one of the reasons why soap works is because it's hydrophilic and it actually breaks up the shell of those of the coronavirus. And so it is a powerful tool for us. Right now.

I'm going to go eat a bar of soap.

You don't need to eat it, but we need to lather ourselves. Just kidding. But when we're talking about washing our hands, like one of the reasons why that actually works is because the soap molecules themselves do actually break apart the surface of this virus, which is great. The reason why you need to be washing your hands for as long as people recommend 20 seconds is because if you look closely and really, really looks, look at your head, you'll notice that there's a lot of, like, little tiny ridges and deep cracks where it can. Although that doesn't look like too much to us right now, if you stick that under even a magnifying glass, like, wow, there's like crevices in there. And that's where all that stuff lives. We need to be washing your hands for a long time, doing it really well, leveraging the fact that soap destroys the surface of those and other types of bacteria and then washing it off so it completely rinses. If we are using hand sanitizers, leaving them on to evaporate for up to 30 seconds, all of the surface gets killed. That's actually what we're doing right now. And although I hadn't heard about sugared blood, when we think about soap and its effect upon these molecule of sort of these viruses, that is definitely something we can. That we can leverage. And so you mentioned something that might actually make it, you know, help the virus. I'm mentioning something actually kills the virus. So between the two of us, we're talking about the surface. And there you go. Off we go.

So you were talking about, like, sort of eating the rainbow. You know, obviously, because of our work with Wildfit, I'm getting a lot of people asking me, like, like, what should they be eating? What shouldn't they be eating? And, you know, to support themselves best. And my answers are typically, you know, look, what humans have been eating for the last 2 million years is not a mystery. We know what that is. And that's probably the safest path to go. It's not so easy for us at the moment. But, you know, do you have any. I mean, look, people are. They're. They're not dealing with food shortages in most places, but they are dealing with variety shortages. And one of the things that just shocks me is the number of people writing to me going, yeah, the frozen pizza aisle is empty, but the produce aisle is full.

I know.

Oh, my God.

What are we doing?

If any of our people out here that are watching, because we actually are broadcasting this live as well as the publishers, and if any of the people that are out there are getting ready to go do a shop, what would you suggest to them? Where should they be putting their focus on? What should they walk right past and not even consider to be food. And what should they be buying more of?

Well, this is stuff that you taught me a couple years ago when I was listening to your talk. You spoke right before I did. So we actually watched each other's speeches. And one of the things that you said which really resonated with me was eat real food that you recognize as food. Humans are the only species on the planet that supposedly need a food guide. Like, seriously, this is not complicated.

Well, that's not totally true, Greg. You know, like pets need a food guide and zoo animals need a food guide. Anybody who's being fed by humans needs to die animals on earth.

Yeah, I know, no kidding. So anyway, what do we do? I'll tell you what we've done. So we have loaded up our freezer with organic lean meat. I don't eat a lot of meat, but we have, you know, got a little bit of beef, a little bit of pork. You know, it's like really good, awesome, healthy, grass fed, lean organic beef. We've got some wild fish that we've frozen as well. Wild, not farmed. And so that way we're going to be able to get, you know, protein omega 3s and keep our omega 6 levels really low. That's what we've done. We have a whole ton of frozen veggies just in case we are actually confined to shelter in place for a little while. We don't know if that's going to happen. We're just, we've got them there in case we need it. We've got a lot of good canned foods again, just in case we're locked in place for a little while. And I believe we will be. I think we're going to be asked to shelter in place for 30 days at some point and I think we should be. So we're ready with all of that. However, every single day, it's probably about every two days we're going in and loading up on fresh fruits and vegetables. We wash them, we bring them back, we put them in the sink, we wash them properly, as you should anyway. And we're making healthy meals based on as many different colored plants as we possibly can. Right now I'm not too fussed about, you know, getting super complicated. But right now, like literally all we're doing is eat real food that you recognize as food. We're reloading with fresh veggies every two days. We're staying. We never go in the middle of the middle aisles of the grocery store. Like you go all the Way around the outside. And that's a super simple rule to follow. Eat as organic as you can afford. And there's obviously things that better to look at for organic than like the clean 15 and the dirty Dozen or whatever. You can search that stuff and find which types of foods are best for organic. And that's all we're doing. We're eating hyper healthy food right now. I'm not getting super complicated about it. Like you know, we, we know the more vegetables you eat, the longer you live. We know that there's two styles of eating. You know, Wildfit really takes us to another level. So I love what you've done. But you know, in the research it's quite clear vegetarian styles of eating and Mediterranean styles of eating are the types, two types of diets that reverse chronic illness and extend lifespan. So in general that is a broad strokes way to look at this. Just to keep it from getting super complicated for people. We just eat real food that you recognize as food. Eat the rainbow. Eat as organic as you can afford. Drink lots of water. Don't eat junk. If it's in your home, you are someone that you love will eventually eat it. To quote Dr. John Berardi from Precision Nutrition, it's just like if it's in your house, you're going to eat.

It shouldn't be there. Just don't have it there.

Just get rid of it. If you have ice cream in your home, you are going to eat the ice cream at some point. I know because I love ice cream. It can't be in the house. Right.

Well Greg, one day we'll get to, we'll dive you deep into the. I had this person yesterday, I'm trying to. They were saying I'm trying to. I'm glad there's no coffee available because I've really been wanting to quit coffee. And my guide is you. If you are quitting something because it's not available, you haven't quitted quit.

Right. Because it's going right back. The second that it's over.

You need to have ice cream in the house and not eat it, then you've quit.

So back to your emotional thing. I mean the reason why I love ice cream so much is because in 2003 I rode my bike across Africa. We did the Tour d'. Afrique. So it was the first ever ride from Cairo to Cape Town and it was a Guinness World record setting expedition. I didn't get in the Guinness Book of World Records because I got hit by a cow in Malawi. But anyway that's another story. But riding through, I think it was Sudan and we were in the Sahara Desert, insanely hot. Like 50 degrees Celsius, 130 Fahrenheit. Like, insanely hot. My water bottles were, like, hot. I was dirty, hadn't had anything cool for days. And I'm riding along and I see a power cable. And the power cable goes off the road and out into some village. So I ride into the village and it goes down into a hut. So I peek into the hut and sure enough, in this hut in a tiny little village in the middle of the Sahara Desert in Sudan, there was a refrigerator. And in the refrigerator was some ice cream bars, Magnums. And so I was, like, dirty. And so of course I had one. And it tasted so spectacularly fantastic that it rewired my brain to love ice cream for the rest of my life. Anyway, that's the story, why we can't have ice cream in the house anymore. Because if it's here, there's a little break for us on this show.

One little thing I wanted to touch on. And, you know, diet is almost like a religious. You know, it's almost like a religious debate these days. You know, at one end of the spectrum you've got, say, the hardcore vegans, and then at the other end you now have this hardcore carnivore, you know, thing. But one thing that I really want to put out is they are all on the spectrum of a healthy way of looking at food. Because if they're really hardcore good about what they're doing, they agree with one core principle, and that is that we should be eating natural food foods. If they're a hardcore vegan and they're not eating processed garbage and they're not eating refined sugar and all that kind of stuff, then they're a lot closer in relationship to the hardcore carnivore who's not eating those things as well. Because at either end of that spectrum, you're fundamentally eating things that humans have evolved to eat. One thing that I've really been doing a lot of research on lately, because I. I did spend a long time as a vegetarian, is I've been really trying to look at the body's relationship with protein. And one of the things that got to me about this is some time ago, in researching for this book that we're working on about post diabetes, I found out just, Hey, I just found out that insulin was a protein, and I didn't know that. And so I started thinking about that. So I started doing more research into Proteins. Because I, like many people, thought, well, protein is your hair and your muscles. You know, that's what's going on. But what really got to me is I started looking into immunology. As a result of what's going on right now, antibodies are proteins. And so for those of you who are watching, here's something interesting to know, is that proteins are effectively complex molecules that our bodies build. And, Greg, you correct me anywhere I'm wrong, because you probably are deeper into this. But as I understand it, they're complex molecules that our body builds to do advanced jobs. So insulin, antibodies and so on. The way our body builds them is with little Lego bricks called amino acids, I think, 11 of which we manufacture happily inside our bodies, but nine of which are essential, we have to eat them. And so one of the things that I think people need to be aware of right now is it is very difficult to get all of those amino acids satisfied from a purely vegan diet without real concentration. And so, like you said, having a little bit of meat or fish even once a week or something, probably a good idea in my opinion. And I hate to push the buttons of the vegan community out there, but I'm just. Right now, I'm no longer interested in the politics of it. I'm interested in what's going to be best for the immune system.

Right? So I agree with everything you said. So we sort of break down what are proteins. They are just as you say, they are complex molecules inside the human body. They're made up from amino acids, some of which we can produce, some of which we cannot, and therefore we have to eat them. You can get amino acids from plants, you can get them from meat, you can get them from, you know, fish. There's many different ways of getting them. They make up your muscles, your bones, your skin, your enzymes, which break down the foods that you eat. So they're basically responsible for the structure and function of your body. Actual execution machine machinery of the body. Carbohydrates are the molecules, once they're either complex, in which there's lots of different, you know, chunks of them together, or simple, in which case you just got one chunk. When we eat complex carbohydrates, let's just say wild rice with the husk still on it, you know, that gets broken down. And as it gets broken down, eventually it's in these super simple little molecules. Those are the energy sources for the human body. So protein structures would use carbohydrates to do their work. Vision, swallowing, muscle contractions, digestion, Right. It all happens through that mechanism. Fat is basically stored energy and also structural. So we build myelin, for example, which is the compound that wraps around nerves inside your brain. Your brain is largely made up of fat. Your nervous system is largely made up of fats. We need all three. So I don't get caught up in, like, the high protein. So actually, if you look at it historically, you'll see that there was a low fat craze. Right now there's a low carb craze. I'm sure the next craze, the only one left to do, is the low protein craze that's coming. Who knows when, but it's the only one left. So it will happen. I believe in balance. I think you need carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. I think that we've learned that certain types of fats are really unhealthy for us. I think we've learned that certain types of carbohydrates are really unhealthy for us. Similarly, I think that there are some proteins that are really good for us. But basically, what we come back to always is basically what you teach in Wildfit, which is eat real food that you recognize as food. You know, when you were in Africa recently, out in the bush with people who are actually really healthy, I'm sure they're not counting their calories. I'm sure not. They're not counting grams of carbs.

Greg. I asked the chief, do any of you ever intentionally fast? He laughed at me. What?

I think you also asked him, like, do any of you guys have mental health problems? He's like, maybe I've got a little upset for a couple days, but that's about it.

That's about it. And then when I asked him if they had suicide, I had to explain what suicide was. And he said, and when I finally explained it, there was a guy sleeping in the back of the cave, and he busted out laughing because the idea of suicide was that absurd to them.

Right. And not to minimize it. Like, it's a serious thing in our society. And if you're struggling with depression or anxiety, like, this is a real challenge. It's.

But I think there's a clue. I think there's a clue in the way they're living. And I believe that it has a combination to do with that. They are living in an environment that is a match for their adrenal system. They're living in an environment that's in a match with their. With their psychological instincts and their physiological needs.

Right.

This, this, you know, you were talking about. Okay, so there's the low fat craze, which by the way was bought and paid for by the sugar lobby that they paid for that. And then the low meat phase. And here's the one thing that I'd love to another day have a deeper dive with you about is one of the principles that we really hammer home for our wildfitters around the world is that the human body evolved to survive and thrive through seasons. So the body has the ability to buffer things. So the idea of a recommended daily allowance is one of the most absurd principles. Principles in the world of nutrition. Because you. Can you imagine putting a meal together that or a day together that satisfied the full rda? It's insanity.

Yeah, well, so that was built after World War II based on the average. The average consumption of people in society. It wasn't like for any. Like, it's not based on science. Like, it's random anyway. We're not good. But I think that it's really.

No, no. I do think that one of the important things about discussing the reality of seasons is that the reason that low carb works is that it's a season, right? And the reason that low fat works is that it's a season like, you know, our ancestors did not have ready access to fat. I talked to the bushman just now. I said, are there any animals that you don't kill when you're hunting? And he goes, well, up until recently, no. But recently park officials told them they're not allowed to go kill the big five anymore. They're not allowed to kill rhinos, elephants, that kind of stuff. But the hippo are not in the big five. So I asked them, what about hippos? And he goes, well, we would love to, but it's really tough to get them out of the water. The reason they would love to is hippos are tasty because they're fat, right? So this whole, like this thing of making sure our body gets what they need, it's not like getting what they need every day. It's getting what they need over the space of the month, years.

And that's balance. That's balance, right? So you're right. Spread it out over the years. Same thing with stress. And then I'll get back into nutritional stuff because I cut a couple notes I want to run through. But, you know, if we're looking for like work life balance, for example, we're not looking for work life balance every single day, we're looking for work life balance over A week, a month, a year. And that makes it actually possible and attainable for people. It's the same thing with nutrition. You're not looking to be, you know, anyway on any given day, but over the course of a month, a season, a year, we end up in a really good place. We track ourselves over time. And I think that is exactly. It also allows you to change things up. You don't want to be eating the exact same way every single day for the rest of your life. It's going to.

I have to deal with that. Sometimes we get our Wildfit clients on green smoothies initially, you know, to. To get some good cellulose and a bunch of other good things. But what we have to educate them is they have to seasonally rotate those things. There's no one vegetable that you should eat every single day, because every vegetable, for every great plant, vitamin or mineral that it has, it also has chemicals that are trying to defend it. When people eat cruciferous vegetables for too long, they start getting leg cramps because they're having a problem with magnesium. This idea of there being variety is really important.

Evan. I agree. Like, that's eat real foods. You recognize food. Eat the rainbow. Lots of different variety, many different recipes. Get good cookbooks, try new things out. Lots of different spices. There's amazing stuff like garlic, for example, amazing for fighting infections, great for lowering blood pressure, slows down atherosclerosis. You know, it has these amazing sulfur compounds like Allison and stuff like that. Ginger is incredible for reducing inflammation. What else? Turmeric, Fantastic for anti inflammatory uses. Almonds are packed full of vitamin E, which is key for immune system health. Green tea packed full of flavonoids, which is an antioxidant. Also a great amino acid, L theanine, which aids your T cells, which we use for immune function. Mushrooms, lots of different types of mushrooms, which you can use all sorts of essential vitamins, minerals, like we're looking for polyphenols, flavonoids, all these different vitamins, minerals which come from all of these different foods. And so eating is one of the other weird things is that people think when they eat healthy they have to eat less. The reality is when you're eating healthy, you actually eat a lot more. And the variety of interesting foods you can have is absolutely spectacular. Another one just to throw out there and then I'll shut up, is like citrus fruits, like vitamin C, phenomenal for your body. Body vitamin C helps you to absorb iron, which helps your red blood cells to carry more oxygen, which gives you More energy, broccoli packed full of vitamins A, C and E and antioxidants, fiber. There's so many amazing things for us to explore right now. I encourage people to get out there and to do that and to try that out.

Greg, you and I are so on the same page about that. Now let's talk. I want to go to some psychology in a minute too, but right now I want to talk a little bit about supplements. Now I'll give you the Wild Fit view of supplements or the ERIC view of supplements. The ERIC view of supplements is that the vast majority of supplements are sold through scaremongering and ridiculousness and end up just creating expensive urine.

I say that.

So then beyond that, the way we look at it is that if somebody has a measured deficiency, not a media hyped deficiency, but a measured deficiency, then what they should do is look for a lifestyle solution to that deficiency. In other words, if they're low on vitamin C, then they should go and eat vitamin C in a whole food form to the best they can. And then if after doing that they are still having a measured deficiency, that they might then look for the highest quality possible supplement that. Does that make sense to you?

I lost you there for a second, but all I will say is yes. All right, 100% agree with you. Yes.

With that stated then, as somebody who doesn't typically take a great deal of supplements, I am taking vitamin C. And I wonder if there are any supplements that you would support right now for people in the current just, just because they might not have the full food variety they may normally have. What would you recommend if anything?

Yeah. So love everything you just said. Totally on the same page. I've coached 200 Olympic athletes and supplemented like five of them. The foundation is always healthy eating. And if you have a bad diet and you take supplements, you end up with expensive urine. Exactly. As you've said, if you've got a great diet.

And Greg, sorry, but let's be clear. If you have expensive urine, what that means, means is you've had to pass that stuff through your liver. You've used up life force to process stuff that your body isn't dealing with. So it's a joke to call it expensive urine, but the truth is you're probably not doing any great. You're not only not doing good, but you might even be doing some harm.

Fair. Yeah. And like the other thing is you might even think that it's okay to keep going with your bad diet. Right? Like it's just, it's not going to help you. If you've got a bad diet, fix the diet, then we'll talk about supplementation. So what I've done recently and Judith, my wife over the last couple years is we spent actually about three or four or five years working on fixing our diet. It does not happen quickly. It's been a long process. We've been slowly getting rid of things, adding things back in. I think we're in a pretty good place right now. Still some room to improve, but we're in a pretty good place. Then what we did was we both went and got comprehensive blood work done and our genetic profiling and I matched up, I'll just talk about myself, not Judith. I matched up my genetics to my blood work and I found that I was low in a few minerals, I was very low in magnesium and so I take a little bit of magnesium right before I go to sleep, which is actually helping me to sleep better. I was found I was very low in omega 3s, which is weird because I've got a pretty high omega 3 diet. And so I did my genetics and I've got bad genetics for absorption of omega 3s, so I now take four times the recommended dose of omega 3s and that is sort of dealt with that sort of problem. I was also low in B12, not surprising. I eat mostly plants with a little bit of meat. So I added back in some red meat which is grass fed. I do that like once every week or two.

And that's basically I'm concerned that's still plant based eating because that animal ate a plant.

Dr. Exactly. It's like, you know, what did your food eat? And that's, you know, what you're just getting in a distilled form. So I'm with you all the way. So let's talk about the supplements right now with regards to immune function. So vitamin C is I think a powerful one and people would argue with us yes or no on that one. But I believe that the Cochrane review on vitamin C and immune function is quite compelling and it's independent. So that's why, quote Cochrane Reviews, there's an independent group that reviews all of the research to summarize it into what does the vast majority of research say? They assess the quality of the research and also the funding sources of the research to get at something that's hopefully relatively independent of external influence. And so the vitamin C research seems to show that vitamin C shortens illness, infectious illness like colds and maybe influenza. So that that is a possibility for us right now. See, lots of citrus fruits, lots of bell peppers are high in vitamin C. And if you want to take a supplement, that's. That's fine. Another one is L glutamine. L glutamine is used by white blood cells. So that is a possibility for us to consider at this time. Zinc is another one to make sure that you are having at this time. Zinc seems to have a very powerful effect upon the immune system. And then the antioxidant spectrum, acde, are also important. But those are important for, I believe, for helping the body to repair and to regenerate and to deal with the inflammatory cycle that happens. So that's really what we've been looking at. But I'm trying to get, as you said, all of those through real food. I do supplement a little bit of magnesium. I'm not supplement supplementing vitamin C right now, but I'm drinking a ton of lemon water. I just make water, stick it in a copper, squeeze in half a lemon, and I do that all day long. So I think I'm doing reasonably well in that space. So that's what we're doing right now. In addition to foods like garlic, we're using lots of garlic. We always use lots of turmeric. Cinnamon is in our diet a fair bit right now. So we're just using as many spices as we possibly can to make sure we have lots of polyphenols and flavonoids and many of the compounds that are great for us, we don't even know what they are, which is why eating real food is so powerful. We haven't broken it all down and figured out what all of those are. But every time you eat a real food, there's a combination of vitamins, minerals, polyphenols, flavonoids that are present in that food that tend to work together. Because as you propose or as you popularize from an evolutionary perspective, we have evolved to use those foods as real food. And there's many things that they do in conjunction at the same time that we can take advantage of. That's really what we've been doing in my house, and I would encourage everyone to do as well. The foundation is really just eat real food. You recognize as food, eat the rainbow, eat as organic as you can afford, don't eat processed food. Stay out of the middle part of the grocery store. Frozen pizza is not doing you any favors right now. And we can do a lot better. We need to do a lot better.

I'm with you. Really, really good list there, Greg. I appreciate that. A lot. Let's talk a little bit about psychology. You know, you know, we're in a, you know, we're in a place right now where we've, you know, socially isolated and we're locked down and stuff. And, you know, humans are social animals and, you know, obviously it's nice that we've got forums where you and I can create a level of connection like this between the two of us and people can do those types of things. But talk to me a little bit about your feeling about how do we keep ourselves mentally robust during this time, because we're very clear here that cortisol, or generally stress itself, is not good for the immune system. So how do you feel about that?

Yeah, really interesting. We'll start with the physiology because I'm a physiologist and that's my space where I love to operate. So if we think about stress and what it does. So let's say that we perceive a threat from the environment. From an evolutionary perspective, that's like a saber tooth, tigers coming at you, right? So then all of the. There's many hormones that get dumped into your system. Cortisol and adrenaline being two, probably all felt the effect of adrenaline. Let's say you get startled and three or four seconds later your heart starts pounding in your chest. That's adrenaline having its immediate effect. The purpose of that is to prepare your body for fighting or running. So it's fight or flight. It's the response. And it supercharges your muscles, makes you stronger, opens up your lungs, your heart starts working better, your pupils dilate, so you can get all sorts of information. It's literally preparing you for battle in the moment. The other thing that it does is stress. Acute stress will cause your thymus gland and your whole body to release white blood cells into the bloodstream. There's a massive immune response instantaneously because you're assuming that you're about to get cut or hurt, and therefore you're going to need to defend that space from infections. There's a massive overwhelming immune response in the moment of acute stress. The problem is if you keep doing acute stress over and over and over again, you run out of white blood cells and the immune system eventually gets depressed and we become chronically ill. And so we want to. That's one of the reasons why taking breaks and making sure that even in this time of extreme anxiety and stress and fear, we're finding time every single day to downshift, turn off media, don't go on social. Give yourself a break. I'm checking the news in the morning and evening. I'm not checking it during the day because I found myself losing my mind when I was doing that. Meditation is incredibly powerful right now. Having a meal with your family with all of all of the devices off is really important. Spending really great time with your kids if you've got them at home or FaceTiming or Zoom calling or Skype calling with someone, friends is really, really important. So although we are socially isolated, we can be emotionally connected. And Dan Buettner's work on the blue zones around the world of the communities where people tend to live the longest and become centenarians at the highest rate shows very clearly that the people who live the longest have the strongest social bonds between them, their family and their friends. We want to be leveraging that right now more than ever. Also, really good research that shows that women who have survived breast cancer have a lower recurrence rate if they spend more time with their friends and have close social bonds. And cancer is related to immune function. The immune system is what fights off cancer. So this is incredibly important for us. So a few things that I've been doing for. Funny enough, it's so weird that this has happened this week, but like, I feel like I've been talking to people now more than ever. Like, this is a great. This is happening literally because I was like, I was on WhatsApp. I was like, hey man, happy birthday. And you're like, hey, you want to do tv? And I was like, heck yes, let's do it. So, like, here we are and having this great time on Saturday morning and I'm chatting to a buddy from around the world, right? This is super cool. Last night I was on a call with my friends who are all entrepreneurs. We're talking about what happened to our business this week and how we can turn things, things around. Every single morning, my buddies, about five or six of us get on a Google hangouts while we're riding the bike in our houses and we trash talk as we're riding our trainers down in the basement. And we've actually created a messaging group. Actually they're messaging me right now, probably watching this, giving me a hard time. I'm not going to look at that. Anyway, so, like, there's ways of being connected. Oh, the other one. Like my kids are FaceTiming my parents every single night so that my grandparents, the grandparents are putting the kids to bed. It's incredible. That wasn't happening before. So there's ways of really getting ourselves through this even though we are socially distanced as we should be, we can still be emotionally connected and we may even have more time to do that. Like we're not commuting to and from work right now. I've got an hour back a day where I'm not spending driving to and from the hospital. So I think that there's a whole bunch in there that's really, really important. But I think that stress is something to be careful of. Just to summarize it, even though we're socially isolated, let's be emotionally connected and all of that I think will make a huge difference for people through this time. And like I said, I don't think this is going away anytime soon. So we're going to have to get into a good system because I think we're in this for 12 to 18 months. Again, I could be completely wrong, but that's my thoughts today.

Gregg, really good stuff. I really support the idea about we can be physically separated but not socially. I think that's a really big thing. I've had the great fortune because I decided to start this show. I've done a couple of really fascinating interviews. One of the things that I've been really concerned about through all of this is parenting. I remember years ago reading a story about children who were raised during the Great Depression, ended up being so messed up about money for the rest the of their lives that many of them died with millions of dollars, having never traveled the world, lived in a nice house. Like they just were so fearful of money. I think one of the jobs that we have right now is to make sure that our kids remember this as the fun time we were locked down for a while rather than as something really truly scary. And I think as much as we need to do that for our kids, we absolutely need to do that, that for ourselves as well.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. So I've got two kids, five and nine. This is an interesting time. We are in March break, so they were expecting to be off this week, so it's not too weird. But you know, Monday they were expecting to go back to school. And so there's a few things that we've done and then there's one challenge we're trying to overcome. So I'll just be radically transparent here. The first thing we did is I'm a physiologist, so I have. My kids are used to talking about the human body and therefore when all of this was happening, and especially more recently, we've been talking about what is a virus, what does it do. How does it work in terms of functioning in the body? So, like, it takes over cell. It starts rebuilding itself so there's many more. The cell breaks, the viruses go everywhere. You cough them out. It comes out through the particles in your nose. Like, we've explained all of this to them in great detail. So they understand, like, why are we cleaning surfaces? Why do we cough into our elbow? All of these sorts of things. And they're all over it now. They understand it. And so that's really important because they also understand, like, why you need to stay distant from people right now, and they're not running outside to go hug their friends from up and down the street. Like, there's a deep understanding there. And Adam gets it. He's five, so he. It's cool. The other really interesting thing was last night, we explained. Judith explained, sorry, exponential growth curves to Ingrid. So for doubling every four days, which is the rate of new infections at the moment. So there's only a few hundred right now. So it's like, what's the big deal? There's millions of people, actually. Well, if you do doubling every four days, you're into hundreds of thousands within weeks. And so that's an important concept for her to. To understand and to grasp. And so we're just being radically transparent with our kids. And when they understand, they understand why we are doing what we're doing, and it's not scary for them. They're like, okay, well, this is just what's going to happen.

Yeah.

However, last night, when we announced that Ingrid's school was going digital next week and that they were going to do all of their classes over her iPad, she freaked out. She was not impressed because she does her work with her friends. I'm like, well, you're still going to be on. They're going to be there. You're going to see them. She's like, looking at a screen is not the same as having. And she's, like, really upset. And so I think that was like. Although I'm like, it's fine. We're just explaining how it works. We're being transparent. It's all good. In reality, I think there is some tension. They are feeling it. And so that out, like that emotional outburst that she had last night, finally actually confronting the fact that she is physically isolated from the people that she cares a lot about, her friends. You know, we're gonna have to do a lot of work to make sure that that connection stays. We're gonna have to do some FaceTime calls with her friends. We're gonna have to do interesting things to keep everybody engaged and to make her feel like she's connected, right? Like, I'm fine. I've got Judith, I got my kids. They're all in the house. I'm great. I'm talking to my buddies over the phone and video calls like, this is actually, I'm really enjoying myself this week. But for our kids, it's going to be a little bit different. And I think we need to recognize that their little brains need a little bit more support, a little bit more explanation, a lot of exercise, tons of sleep, and really help them to navigate this because it's a difficult time. And. Yeah, it's a difficult time.

Greg, I saw this funny little post the other day. It's kind of cute, but the post said, you know, our grandparents were called up to fight in the skies and seas and trenches, and we're being called on to sit on the couch. I think we can handle it, which is cute. But I think it misunderstands one really important thing, and that is that when you are being called to fight in the skies of the seas and the trenches or to work in the factories, you are being distracted by a fight. You are being distracted by activity which is really fundamentally important to humans. So while those people were risking their lives on a psychological basis, they were satisfying a lot of the human needs. When we are forced to, quote, sit on the couch, that's in many ways the longer that goes on, the more difficult that would be than having to go work in a few factory or go fight in the trenches, in a sense. And I think that that's where we do need to be creative about, you know, how we explain things. Because on one level, your kids are like, well, why can't I go play with the kids at the park? And on one level you want to say, well, because it's not a good idea right now. On the other level, you don't want to say stuff that's going to make them germaphobic for the rest of their lives. It's a tough time.

It is. So I think the fundamental difference that you just described there is like, when we were called to go, my grandparents, my dad, grandfather was called, my great grandfather fought in the trenches of World War I as a medicine. My grandfather was a navigator of a bomber in World War II. So, like, they were called to do things that thankfully I have not been called and hopefully my kids never get called to do. But the difference is that that was a clear, defined threat. Whereas right now, although we have a clear defined threat. It's so uncertain, we don't know. And I guess they would have probably said the same thing. We don't know what the future holds, but it is uncertain right now. And from uncertainty comes anxiety. And from anxiety can come fear. And so I think a lot of us are faced with a very uncertain future. We don't really know what's going to happen, we don't know how long this is going to last. We don't know how severe this is going to get. And so we have fear, we have anxiety. And I think that one thing that I've been trying to practice and I think one thing that can really help people on this is bringing your attention back into the present moment. And when we bring ourselves back into the present and out of the future, I think that that enables us to take control. And it's like, alright, so this pandemic is happening around the world, but I'm here in my house, my kids are in the house, I've got today, it's a beautiful day, we're all healthy right now. What am I going to do? Wait, so is that like I'm going to go do music lessons with my kids on the couch through the YouTube kids fired up, let's go do that. Does that mean I'm going to go do a workout in my little tiny room that I've allocated in my house to exercise the closet? Yes, I'm going to do that. So by bringing yourself back into the present moment, I think it allows us to control anxiety to some extent. And the second piece of that is being very careful of the media psychology effect. Our minds are affected by whatever we consume, be that audio, video or written. And so be very careful of who you are following on social right now. What media are you consuming? What podcasts are you listening to? What magazines are you subscribed to? I just canceled all my magazines. Anyway, that's going to help with that factor, really. Be careful about what media you are consuming and make sure that it's not overwhelming your day. Tracking this minute by minute on the news channels is not going to do your mental health any good at the moment. Obviously, stay informed because we need to know what's going on, but it can be done in a controlled way so that we're not overwhelmed by this whole thing.

And I think the staying informed piece is, I mean, look, here's my social media recipe that I've been giving people and they're going to get bored of it soon, but here's my social media recipe use Instagram for good news, unfollow anybody who is scaring you, frightening you, not being useful, or publishing ridiculous canned content that their social media team wrote three weeks ago.

Right.

Follow people that are inspiring and what have you. And that's Instagram. So I have a very nice, clean Instagram feed, because I'm only following people that make me feel good. On Twitter, I follow credible doctors and scientists on the front lines of what's going on, both in terms of fighting it and in terms of researching it. When I want to get informed, I go to Twitter. When I want to, you know, have more fuzzy stuff, I go over to Instagram. And that's the way I've been dealing with it. In fact, later today, I am publishing a list speaking you mentioned Peter Diamandis earlier, he published a really awesome blog on all the good news that's to be going.