Can Exercise Cause Depression?

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, the misconception that people have about suicide is that they think that that is somebody giving up. And the reality of suicide is it's an escape of a reality that you're trapped in. So if you're in a bad situation, you're gonna do whatever you can to get out of pain. When you're depressed, you're going through a state of feeling like you don't want to do anything. Exercise is a logical combatant for that because it forces you to get up and do something. In that forcing of you to go up and do something, usually you're doing it outside around somebody or something, which creates serotonin, which creates dopamine, which creates adrenaline. So it's a natural process. Just Google gym selfie, you'll find about 40 pages full of articles that talk about the correlation between a gym selfie and narcissistic behavior.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness dot com.

Hey, folks, Ben Greenfield here and my guest today is Wesley Chapman, who I actually first met over at the 4:3:1 project on Spartan CEOs Joe DeSena's farm back during the Spartan World Championships and then ran into Wes again on the Spartan Cruz. And he actually has an incredible story. Wes was abandoned at 1 years old by his father and then at 6 and a half by his mom. He tried to commit suicide 12 times before his 16th birthday. He was on 25 meds a day for about a decade. His liver failed when he was 16 and he was given a 20% chance to live. And now for the past 19 years, he's been studying health the brain alternative methods to failed treatments for depression. And today we're gonna actually talk a little bit about the kind of shocking link between exercise and depression, along with Wesley's amazing story. So, Wesley, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Hey, thanks, Ben. I appreciate it. It's been fun. Every time we're hanging out, we're always doing something crazy, so it's good.

I know, it's kind of weird. Adrenaline seekers.

Exactly.

You know, the first time that I met you, not to start this podcast off on too depressing of a note, but the first time I met you, you told me that you tried to commit suicide. 12 times before your 16th birthday. Why? What happened?

You know, that's a big question. And you know, obviously we were, I think when we first met we were both keynote speaking at an event. So just so people know I don't just like walk up to people and randomly say, hi, my name is Wes. Tried to commit suicide 12 times. We were, we were in, in conversation. But the, the reality of, of where I was between the ages of really, you know, 0 and 26, but the, the highlighted years of 0 between 16, there was a ton of dysfunction. There was abandonment issues, there was self esteem issues, there was the drugs themselves. As you mentioned, I was on 25 different medications every single day. I was labeled with everything you could imagine from post traumatic stress to bipolar to add to anxiety. I mean, I had all the pretty little labels and with those pretty little labels came a lot of medications and I really just didn't feel like myself. And I think the misconception that people have about suicide is that they think that that is somebody giving up. And the reality of suicide is it's an escape. It's an escape of a reality that you're trapped in. So it's, you know, if you're in a bad situation, if you're in pain, you're going to do whatever you can to get out of pain, right? Like if you do some adrenaline seeking thing and you tear a ligament or you do something, you're going to, you're going to put a brace on it, you're going to, you're going to do whatever you can to escape the pain. And mentally people are in pain. And 80% of the American population at my time, when, now I think it's like 72% believed in God. And you know, we talked about that. There's heaven and heaven is this amazing place and heaven is this glorious, you know, next chapter of your existence. And so if you're stuck in this horrible life, if you're stuck in this horrible world, then why wouldn't you want to get out? And I think too many people don't understand that about depression. And so thus the cure for, you know, depression and people who are suicidal isn't to tell them that, you know, suicide is wrong and that they shouldn't feel that way. It's to give them an alternative. It's to give them an escape.

So when you were diagnosed with the ADD and all these issues when you were a kid, what was going on? What was your household and your upbringing like that you would have been diagnosed with all this stuff. You're just Like a troubled kid at school or what was going on with your upbringing at home?

Yeah, it was a smorgasbord of things. So first and foremost, my father left when I was one, my biological father. And then my mother remarried very, very quickly, and she married a very dark individual. And when I say quickly, we're talking, like, within a couple of months. And I don't know if she got legally married, but, you know, she's living with this dude. And he was incredibly abusive. Sexually abusive, physically abusive, emotionally abusive. I was tied up to doghouses. I was tied up to chain fences. I was. I was a play toy for his amusement. The type of sexual abuse that I went through wasn't just, you know, quote unquote. I don't even know if this is politically correct to say, but it wasn't stereotypical, like, just being molested. It was tortured, played with, and used, like, as a. As a prop for a bunch of his, you know, brothers and things like that. So it was. And then I had. As I developed, I had a younger brother who's exactly 10 months younger than me. So, I mean, it was. It was a. You know, and he's my full brother. He is mentally handicapped, which is a surprise as why I'm not with the drugs and the different things that my parents were doing in their lives. And there's all kinds of stuff that happened before I was even born with, you know, different stories. But there was just a lot of chaos in my life. And what was very unique about me and what really started kind of my journey through the system was my first documented suicide attempt was when I was four and a half years old. And that's really weird. That's really odd. And psychiatrists and psychologists were just, you know, like, holy cow, what's going on here? Why is a four and a half year old suicidal? How does it. How does a four and a half year old even have the concept of life, let alone death?

What did you try to do when you were four and a half years old?

I ran out in front of cars, you know, and I don't remember this. This is all documented in my custody report. But I ran out in front of cars screaming, I want to die. I want to die. Someone kill me. And so it was just very, you know, very painful. At the age of five, I was pleading with neighbors to take me. And, you know, people didn't understand it. They thought it was just like some weird thing, but. And then, of course, I threw temper tantrums. And that led to, when I was six And a half years old. My mother left me at a hospital and she never came back. And so that started a whole journey of, you know, where do I belong? Who am I, where am I going to go? I lived in hospitals for years, and we did the math last year. And I'm a 2.1 million dollar experiment in brain, in, like, neuro stuff. I had all kinds of things attached to my body and they studied my sleep behavior, they studied my patterns, they studied my handwriting, they gave me an iq. I mean, all the basic stuff. And the reason it was 2.1 million was the time I spent 17 years under the microscope in the psychology world and being told at seven and a half years old, I was told I would never succeed, I would never become anything. The diagnosis by psychiatrists, psychologists, the doctors, everybody was basically, put me in a boy's home. They were going to put me in a boy's home with the extended psychological assessment until I was 21 years old. At 21 years old, I could be released into society. And their only hope was that I would be stable enough that I wouldn't do something horrific like murder or something like that. So that was my prognosis at seven and a half. And luckily for me, there was a woman who came in my life who didn't believe in that. She believed in me as a human being. She believed that I could become something. And, you know, obviously none of those doctors were right. It doesn't mean that I haven't had my trials and my, you know, difficult times to get over, but they weren't right in the fact that I wasn't worth anything to society and that I was too damaged. So that was my upbringing that was kind of the, you know, this is what you're gonna be, this is what you're gonna get. You know, a lot of kids, it's like, oh, you can be Spider man or firefighter. For me it was, you know, don't kill someone.

So, so when you say like a woman came into your life, you mean like a relationship or was this like a character?

No, she, she, she became my mother. She was my mother's mother. So she's my grandmother on my mother's side. And she lost contact with me for about two years. There's a whole fun story where actually the Mormon missionaries were volunteering in our hospital and they would come up to our wing, and I was in the inpatient wing for children, and they'd come up there and visit the kids. And they visited me and found out some things about me, and they did some genealogy and they reconnected me with my grandmother. And then she was able to start the battle and attempt to get temporary custody, which lasted until I was 18. I was never adopted or anything. But she finally got temporary custody granted to her when I was nine, nine and a half years old. So that started kind of the rehab journey for me. Wow.

So in terms of you studying depression, obviously something that you struggle with and something that you have a pretty intimate connection with, what led you down that road? Did you start looking into alternatives to the meds that you were on? Did you start looking into health practitioners who could help you out? Or what happened as far as the search for alternative methods to treat depression?

Yeah. So I believe that all great discoveries are found when human beings backs are up against the wall. Right. I believe that's when we really, truly come to the, you know, to the, to the strongest of who we are and what we will become is really under pressure. And for me, it was that I was in this circumstance where I'd been given all these labels. Yes. Now I had somebody who loved me and cared about me, but I still had a lot of things to get through. And I had a lot of anger and a lot of hate and all these different things. And then drugs, their whole intention is to nullify you. It's to make you feel, you know, calm. It's to stop the chemical reactions that are happening on hyperdrive in your brain. And so at 16 years old, after taking 25 medications every single day of my life for 10 years, my liver failed and my back was up against the wall. I was.

Were they all depression medications?

Depression, anti anxiety, post traumatic stress? And then about half of them were drugs to offset the side effects from drugs that I was on, isn't it?

It's crazy that a lot of people don't realize that this stuff gets metabolized by the liver. I mean, and they assume it's like a free pass with the liver. I was actually just talking with somebody today about not a depression drug, but Modafinil or Adderall that a ton of CEOs and soccer moms and all sorts of folks are using for cognitive performance. And that stuff goes straight to the liver, as does a lot of things that people are using for either energy or depression. It's like you have one liver, which, you know, obviously, yeah, you have one liver.

And I mean, it's funny that we talk about that, but yet, as you know, when we look at alcohol, we're like, oh, it's so bad for your Liver. It's like the body doesn't like, oh, this is alcohol. Let's pass this through the liver. It's like the body works as you know, the body does everything with everything the same way. And what we put through it is going to depict. It's going to depend on how, you know, how well that system works.

Yeah, I do, actually. You know, when I'm using some kind of a capsule or a tablet or anything that can be dissolved sublingually.

Right.

Like in the mucous membrane of the lips, I go straight to that, even for things like THC or whatever, just because you can at least bypass the liver and go straight into the bloodstream when you dissolve in that area of your mouth. But still, I mean, 25 different meds, dude, I can't imagine the stress on your liver.

Yeah. And I mean, as you know, the liver, the colon, I mean, the pancreas, I mean, all of it works together in this digestive process. And. And so my liver failed and I was. I was back up against the wall. And it's was interesting, and it's interesting how whether you want to say God or the universe works, is that certain things get placed into your life at certain times. And about three months prior to this happening, I had been exposed to colon therapy and to colonics, and it was. It was one of those things where, you know, as a teenager, you're like, really? You're going to stick that there and do that?

No way.

You know, it's not going to happen. So remember laying on this in this hospital, and these doctors are, you know, same doctors that have told me that I was never going to amount to anything, that I'm this crazy, horrible person that, you know, I just. I'm worthless. All this stuff. Take these pills and your whole life will change. These same doctors are now telling me, hey, guess what? You only have 20% chance to live. And in that moment, I'll never forget it. I remember just thinking to myself, thinking, up to this point, I have. I have had, you know, a dad who left, a mom who was. Who was, you know, trouble. I've had a stepfather who was crazy. I've lived in all these different homes. I've been through all these different experiences, all these adults, all these doctors. Everyone has told me what I'm going to be. Maybe it's time that I decide what I'm going to be. And in that moment, I told the doctors to shove it. Literally. I said, you know what? I'm tired of hearing about all your guys's, you know, Scientific data as to why I'm not going to be something in life now. I'm going to die because of the same things that you guys said were going to save me. So I'm out, you know, Chapman out. I'm out of here. Like, this isn't going to happen anymore. And I left the hospital and talked to my grandmother and said, this is what. And I call her mom. So if I slip, everybody just realize that. But I talked to her and I said, this is my plan. I'm going cold turkey off all these drugs, and I'm going to figure out what the heck's, you know, going on with my brain and my body, and I'm going to research this stuff, and that's what I'm gonna do. And she had been, you know, she'd been in the chiropractic industry. That was her profession. So she obviously knew alternative medicine well, and not as well as now as we know it as a family, but we had a decent background in it. And in that moment, I studied everything about the liver, everything about the colon, everything about the digestive system, how the colon is actually the second brain. And a lot of our, you know, our chemicals that fuel our brain and our body are actually produced in the colon. And if our colon is lined with pla and crap, like, how is it supposed to get, like you said, through the bloodstream, that drugs are nothing more than a manipulation of chemicals in the brain? And if, you know. So I just started studying all this and I was lucky. I got into a clonic and spent three or four days going through a colon therapy and just flushing out my system and drinking an immense amount of water. I spent three days in the fetal position. If you've. If anyone listening has ever had any kind of withdrawal from any drug, legal or illegal, it's difficult. Just imagine that times 25, it was very.

Especially with depressant or antidepressants like that that directly influence neurotransmitters.

Exactly. It was physically, emotionally, spiritually. I mean, every piece of my body was going through some type of withdrawal with some type of alter psychosomatic situation. So it was painful, but when I came out of it, I had this immense clarity about my existence, about my life, about who I was, about why I had gone through the things that I had gone through. And in that moment, in that time period of my life, I decided to change everything. And I was already a pretty active person. And I was big into rollerblading. That was big in the 80s and roller skating and all that stuff. And so I turned to that and I would go for 8, 9, 10 hours a day to a roller skating rink and just, I mean, I'd go extreme, jumping over four or five garbage cans, figuring out how to do tricks, rail grinds. I mean, I remember staff at the roller skating rink just coming up to me, like, how do you, how can you keep going? Like, we've never seen this. Anyone do this. You're here, you know, six days a week for eight to ten hours a day. Like, do you ever stop? And it was. And I told him, I said, I can't stop. And that was kind of the beginning of my exploration into physical activity and figuring out how to re, manipulate or, excuse me, remanipulate, but how to manipulate my own mind and my chemical makeup to create a well being status where I could function as a normal human being in life.

And I want to ask you actually about this link between movement and either depression or lack thereof, but there was something really interesting that you hit on that we actually haven't talked about before on podcast. And that's the link between the colon and the brain. Right? Because we talk about the gut brain axis and the connection between like the vagus nerve and your central nervous system and your enteric nervous system. Right. The fact that the bacteria in your small intestine can help with neurotransmitter production. And we've had those kind of discussions. Like last one, I think was with Alejandro Junger, the author of Clean Gut, who we interviewed and kind of went into that. But we haven't talked much about the colon. Can you touch on the link between like colon and brain function and some of the things that you learned or some of the things that you discovered as far as where people might be missing out or how people can take care of that area of their body.

Yeah, I mean, the colon is fascinating. I mean, we're still. The brain is obviously the most misunderstood organ in our body. We're still figuring out how the dang thing works. But the colon has been as well. I mean, from Crohn's disease to irritable bowel syndrome. And I mean, medical science has been, if there's a problem with the colon, you cut it out or you cut a portion of it out or whatever, colon cancer, all these different things. And at the same time, it's one of those things no one wants to talk about because it's kind of, you know, it's gross, quote unquote, you know what I mean? Talking about stool and bowel movements and all those Kinds of things aren't sexy.

Yeah. Even though we talk about it on this show all the time.

Yeah. Right.

So we're cool with it.

Exactly. So when you look at what's going on in the colon and what's happening there, I mean, it's the. As you've talked about, small intestine, the stomach, the liver, all these things. It's the last place, right? It's where everything is really kind of settling out. And the body is saying, okay, have we gotten everything out? Is everything there? We're moving this through. Has everything been distributed the correct way? I mean, it's like if this was a manufacturing plant. This is quality control, right? This is us checking and making sure that everything that the body needs has been distributed. What more could be distributed? You know, all these different factors. And so when we put into our bodies just a bunch of crap and a bunch of different things, the body just does two things. One, if you're. Everything is perfect and you're, you know, one of those. One of those. One out of a million blessed human beings on the planet who can eat rocks, and rocks come out like. And everything's fine. Like, you don't have to worry about what you eat, then the body flushes out the crap. But for, you know, the 99% of us, the body says the body gets stuck. You know, all the little things that happen in the colon, and it creates plaque on the walls of the colon. And just like you'd have plaque on your teeth, or just like you'd have, you know, plaque on anything else in your body or anything else that you can use your imagination for. And now all of a sudden, that tissue that lines the colon walls, you're not able to. It's not absorbing anything. So the quality control, these last pieces are not happening. And with all of that quality control, that's where the body is sending a lot of the chemicals, the serotonin, the dopamine. That's where a lot of this stuff is being produced. Sent distributed throughout the bloodstream, throughout the body to help break down things, to move things around. And if that plaque is there, stuff can't get out, stuff can't get in. And so now you start building up plaque, which now will just organically start creating a smaller cavity, which creates where things can't go through. And now you start having blockages. And through blockages, you know, we know all the different things that happen, but now you start having all the different, even positive foods, I mean, even good foods for you, if they're. If we're notif you're not flushing out what your body's not using on the toxicity level or even on the high level, like, say, sugars, you know, now the body is trying to figure out what to do with those. And that can turn into fat or it can turn into a chemical. Chemical manipulation in the body. That's the opposite of what you're trying to get. You can. You can have too much of good things just as much as you can have not enough of good things.

So were you before you did this colonic and got rid of this plaque, which I know some people believe in, some people do. Not in terms of the toxic mucus layer, but as far as your bowel function, were you constipated? Were you having issues in addition to just the neurotransmitter issues? Was that kind of a problem for you?

Not extensively. Not in a medical aspect where it was like, holy cow, where. Where am I going to go? What am I going to do with this? I can't go to the bathroom type of a thing. But it was definitely. It wasn't healthy. It was obviously runny, smaller pieces. It wasn't a healthy output in my colon. And in some cases, depending on the drugs and going back to those, give me some kind of laxative drug that was supposed to change that. So it was never natural and healthy. It was always something that I was dealing with. It was always something that I was going through where, I mean, part of your colon, the traverse colon, where a lot of this stuff gets stuck, that was really plugged back up for me. That had a lot of different things that were happening in that area of my colon, but I still had enough passage that things were happening, but just not in a healthy way.

Interesting. Well, I think that this link between your colon and your large intestine and your brain actually is really fascinating. And I realize some people like snicker and some people think this is pseudoscience or alternative medicine when you talk about things like everything from mucoid plaques to colonics to enemas. But I know when I started doing I do coffee enemas, I do them once every one to two weeks. Now, I've caught a lot of flack for that because people think it's just complete bunk. But honestly, you feel like a million bucks afterwards. And it's not just the caffeine, because it lasts for days.

Yeah. And it's a cleanser. I mean, you're cleansing your liver in that action. I mean, you're. And you're using. See this Is the thing that I found is that this planet is filled with everything we need. I mean, it's got it all here. And science keeps finding that. You know, every 15 years, we make some amazing discovery, and it's like, oh, walnuts. Oh, you know, papaya. Oh, you know, marijuana. I mean, whatever. There's always something that science is coming and saying, oh, look, this plant that's been here for, you know, since the dawn of time, quote, unquote, can help us. And caffeine and coffee beans, it's the same thing. It's a cleanser. It's a natural cleanser. We come up with all these, like, household, you know, do it yourself things, and it's like, oh, use coffee to clean. You know, if you've got like a. An antique, you can use coffee to restore your antique. Wonder why, you know, I mean, it's just. It's interesting. So I'm right there with you on that.

Yeah. And if you go to, like, the Wikipedia page on mucoid plaques, you know, which is one of the reasons that people talk about colonic cleanses and. And doing colonics and colonic therapy and stuff like that, you see a host of quotes from physicians who say they've done, like, you know, thousands of autopsies and never found any mucoid plaque whatsoever. And that this idea that you can have toxins in your colon is complete bunk. But then. And this is kind of gross, but I mean, if you go and you look at pictures of the stuff that comes out people's butts when they do things like colonics, it's. It's pretty disturbing. It's pretty nasty. And you combine that with, like, you know, talk from guys like you who have healed themselves or who have begun to fix things like depression and neurotransmitter repletion through something as simple as therapy for the large intestine, there's definitely something to be said for it. So ultimately, though, this was kind of a rabbit hole. I didn't plan on going down. I actually wanted to ask you about kind of what you started to allude to when you were talking about rollerblading and exercise and depression. Because one thing that you actually emailed over to me was this Livestrong article about exercise causing depression. Can you talk a little bit about that, about your experience with it and about what you found, why you're interested in the link between exercise and depression?

Yeah, for sure. And just on the colon thing, one last piece is that now, for the last 15 years, my mother is a colon therapist. And she's actually one of the top colon therapists in the world. And you would be blown away what comes out of people. So it's, it's real.

And does she have a website, like if you want to go check it out or.

Yeah, I'll get that for you. NaturalCleanse.net I believe it is. But I'll get that for you for the show notes. But anyway, so you know, exercise, so we are commonly told. And there's kind of, there's a lot to this study on this Liv Armstrong that, you know, that you put out there. And it's also. There's been another study by Newsweek and there's a lot, there's. It's quite a bit of stuff that goes into this topic because we've been told, and it is true, that exercise is actually something that can help with depression. And the reason for that is very simple. You know, when you're depressed, you're chemically depressed, you're going through a state of feeling like you don't want to do anything, get up, brush your teeth, comb your hair, make food, do any of these things. Exercise is a logical combatant for that because it forces you to get up and do something. In that forcing of you to come up and do something, usually you're doing it, you know, outside. Usually you're doing it, you know, around somebody or something else. You know, you're doing it and you're becoming active, which creates serotonin, which creates dopamine, which creates adrenaline, which gets the brain refiring, gets all the neuros happening. Things start happening. So it's a natural process.

Most people know that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What people don't understand is that through exercise you can actually create. And especially people who are depressed, and especially people who find that exercise and physical activity makes them feel better, you can actually create, I believe they call it, you know, over training syndrome, but you can actually create the opposite effect where you become depressed through exercise. And it's a very fascinating thing and it's definitely something, you know, that makes people like raise an eyebrow, but it's real. And you know, just. Just to give a little clarity to. Or I guess not clarity, but a little bit of backing to. What we're talking about here is that my life is now dedicated to this. Last year alone, I was in front of 50,000 children between the ages of. And that's what I focus on as youth. Between the ages of 12 and 18, I was in front of 50,000 people or youth, excuse me. And this year alone, in 2015, we've worked with over 300 youth who are suicidal. And everything that we're talking about today. In this episode, we combat with them, their digestion, their eating, their exercise level, all of this.

Do you recommend colonics and stuff for these kids?

Oh, yeah, 100%, all of it. And it's because, again, it worked for me. It's not just for me, but in my life, I've helped thousands of people who suffer with chronic depression.

Do you run into. Because I know you're not a doctor, and I don't know if you have physicians on your staff or whatever, but do you run into liability issues when you're recommending things like colonics and alternative medicine for kids?

It's interesting. Most of the parents that we work with, literally, they'll sign their kid over to me. So legally, we haven't yet. I'm sure we will. You know, I'm sure we'll have some parent who stands up and says, I can't believe you did that. But. And we're infant, you know, I mean, I started this journey about two years ago. So we're infinite. I'm sure we're going to get people, but I'm also. And which is why I do have a team of lawyers, and we do have people that are starting to come in and protect us, because I'm. I'm the last guy that really cares about that stuff. I really care about helping people and making it work. I'm not politically correct. I'll say things in public schools that, quote, unquote, are, you know, gonna make some drug company mad. I've already had drug companies contact me, so I'm not really.

What would they say?

I'm not. I'm the wrong guy to ask about that. So people aren't happy with the messaging that, you know, that. I'm very vocal about that. I think there is a place for drugs. I do. I think there's a place in time for morphine. I think there's a place in time for antibiotics. I think there's a place in time for things they wouldn't. We wouldn't have created them. But I also think that it's a business and that there's a lot of lies that are told to people. And when we're talking about the psychology of the human mind, we are told that we have to be dependent on a drug or a drug company. I mean, just. And this is a rabbit hole for sure. But just understand that every school shooting that's happened in the United States, every school shooting the child that pulled the trigger was on antidepressants. That's not propaganda. That's not off some third party website. Google it.

What's an example of an antidepressant that these kids run?

There's so many. I mean, you've got Zoloft, you've got Pamela, you've got Prozac, you've got, I mean, they're all over the map. I was on an antidepressant, believe it was called Pamela, that had been on the market for 10 or 15 years before I got onto it. So safe drug, supposed to be one of the safest. About five years after I said, I'm done, Pamela was pulled off of the market. And one of the reasons Pamela was pulled off of the market. So it. So 10 years before me, I'm on it for 10 years, five years after I get off. So it's like 20, 25 years and I may be wrong on the date. So please don't, you know, whatever. But it had been on for a long time. It gets pulled off. One of the reasons it was pulled off the market is they found after, let's just say 15 plus years of being on the marketplace that it possibly stunted growth in human beings. Since ninth grade, I have been 5, 11 and 145 pounds. I maintain 145 pounds. I can go up, down, whatever. Weight is not the problem. But my height, 5'11. My mom is almost 6'2. My dad's pretty tall. Everyone in my family on my biological side is fairly tall. I'm one of the shortest. And my grandmother is five' eleven and a half. She's the same height as me. She's a woman, five' eleven and a half. So ninth grade I stopped growing. Everyone thought I was gonna be this like six foot, you know, seven foot kid. I was, I was a tall kid. I stopped growing. Coincidence? Maybe, I don't know. But I was also on that drug for 10 years, the safe drug.

There's no, like, there's no research that you know of about that.

That's just one of the things that came on, the reasons that they pulled the drug. But you know, going into this rabbit hole a little further, they pulled the drug, renamed the drug, relabeled it and put it back on the market. So, you know, again, it's just one of those things. And it's not. I'm not saying drug companies are horrible and they're the devil. I'm saying that when we understand, you know, going now to this exercise thing, when we understand how the brain works, we understand how complex it is, yet how simplistic it is. It starts giving us a new light, it gives us a new understanding, you know, exercise. One of the reasons in this article on the Livestrong didn't take it to the next level, but one of the reasons that physical exercise becomes such a depressant is the reason behind why you get into physical exercise. If you're getting into physical exercise because it makes you feel better, it makes you feel more alive, it gives you more energy, it makes you have a better relationship with your wife, your husband, whatever, those are sound fundamental things that you're going to continue doing that exercise for because they're life oriented. Unfortunately, fitness has become such a fad that people are getting into exercise. And even if it's like a healthy start, like, I'm depressed, I start working out, oh, this makes me feel better. Now all of a sudden you start doing a natural thing, posting selfies, putting it out there. Now you get into this competitive world of exercise and fitness and now it starts ruling you. And now you're like, oh, well, yeah, I guess I'm really in fitness because I need the six pack. Or I'm really in fitness because I want to be, you know, XYZ at an obstacle course race, or I want to do this or now your fitness psychology has changed.

So are you saying that it's not necessarily like, well, let me ask you this. A lot of people aren't over trained, right? Like they, you know, whatever, they're sore. But like, over training, honestly, it's pretty hard to get over trained. And I 100% agree with you that when you're over trained, like, you can't produce cortisol, you have a hard time creating like dopamine and serotonin. Unless you're jacked up on coffee and glucose or sugar or candy or chocolate. We've talked about overtraining on the show before and yeah, I would absolutely agree that chemically and hormonally, it actually is pretty similar to depression when you're overtrained. Total lack of motivation, whatever. But what you're saying is that even if you're training at a level at which you're not over training, when you're not exercising, or when you haven't gotten your exercise session in for the day, you can become depressed because you've allowed exercise to define what it is that makes you happy and gives you meaning in life.

Exactly. It's like food, let's take food. I love the quote. And I don't know whose it is. I'm sure 100 people have said it. But food was never meant to be enjoyed. It was never meant to be enjoyed. It was meant to nourish. That's food. Now, we can go in extreme and we can say, you know, extreme on one side is like, no, you should enjoy food because it's so amazing. And then you can go. But just think about that for a minute. Like, think about what food has become in today's world. Food is no longer, you know, something we go to for a nourishment source, for a source of nutrition and energy. Now, again, the audience that's listening to this, that's different. You and me, it's different. But just the world as a whole, you know, it's a social thing. It's something that we do. There's. We don't really care what we're eating. You know, we're just putting stuff in our mouths. It's become a huge, huge financial part of the world, especially, you know, first world countries. So again, the purpose of what we do is really the critical thing we can now, as healthy people look at food and say, wow, you know, there was a point in my life where I had a really unhealthy addiction to food or I had an unhealthy relationship. These are like buzzwords that people use. Well, now we're seeing this creep into the physical world. You know, Instagram and selfies and gym selfies. You know, people want to say that, and there's tons of studies. If you go and Google, you know, gym selfie, that's all you have to do is just Google gym selfie. You'll find about 40 pages full of articles that talk about the correlation between a gym selfie and narcissistic behavior. And I don't think that it's just about the narcissistic behavior. It becomes. As you said, it's part of the identity. It becomes part of who you are on a level deeper than just making yourself feel better. But as you said. And my fiance, Jody, she has an incredible story of almost dying and having this not similar to mine. She actually lived a picket life fence, but her family's relationship with food is very emotional. It's very stereotypical. Not a bad thing. They're great people. That's not what it's about. But she had to go through a journey, and fitness became something that she found relief in. But. And this is when this was about four years ago. And this is why this started really getting my investigative personality going, because she Would go work out and feel amazing. But then instead of it being like just one hour workout and then she would go on with her day and do the rest of her responsibilities, it became a three hour workout, then a four hour workout, then a five hour workout, and then it just became more and more and more and it was never enough. And she's beautiful. I mean, you've met her, she's beautiful. Like she just naturally is, doesn't, you know, she doesn't need to use fitness to make herself, you know, quote unquote, more beautiful in the world's eyes. She already is. She was born that way. It was amazing. But for her, it was never enough. And it was this competitive, well, look at this girl and look at this girl and I, you know, and we do the green smoothies and we do this and we do, we do all the healthy stuff. We've been doing it for years. Before it was a fad like you and, you know, and so. But now she looks on Instagram and it's like, well, look at this girl in a bikini holding a green smoothie. You know, nobody's going to think that I'm healthy if I don't have that body. And we, you know, she went through her own development, her own thing, and we came out the other side of it and everything's great. But I started looking at it and I started watching it and then we started, you know, with all these youth that I work with, I started looking at it, I started saying, wait a minute, we all need to calm down. Because the one thing, well, two things that can, that can single handedly shift somebody's life. Food and exercise. Food has been, you know, manipulated to such a degree that we don't even, we don't even know. Like we're guessing all the time about food. And it's, it's sad and it's so, it's so, you know, I just want to reach out to the world and say it's this simple, like, let's not overcomplicate this thing. And now the secondary thing, the thing that did save my life, that changed me. Exercise, physical activity, you know, adrenaline junkie, all this stuff. Now we're seeing this thing just be, as the phrase goes, marketers ruin everything. And something as powerful as fitness is becoming something that is getting very, very dangerous. And it's getting very, very, very scary because it's become competitive outside of your own lifestyle and your own existence to a status of who you are in society and in the world.

Is this just like blue sky Thinking, though, like, do you know of people who have been diagnosed with depression or who show that like the chemical or the clinical signs of depression who maybe aren't over trained? Like, let's say we take somebody who exercises regular, like your exercise enthusiasts, and you strip them of exercise for like whatever, three days, four days, five days. Has anybody actually ever gone in and done like a neurotransmitter evaluation or a blood test or something like that to see if that induces depression, like symptoms on a biological level in folks?

I'm not sure if they have or not. I know they've done the stuff with body image issues and I know they've done the research with over, you know, over training to say that, you know, that that's something that. Yeah. Is it blue sky? I don't know.

Are you talking about like body dysmorphic disorder?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's been, you know, I've had that.

I mean, like, I used to be a bodybuilder where, where if, if you wait, if you wake up in the morning and your six pack does not look exactly as you want it to look and your biceps aren't popping when you do your, your, your flex off in the mirror, like, you get, you get depressed, like, like you desperately want to drop everything you're doing and go to the gym. You know, it's like that movie, they.

Have done studies with bodybuilders that, that, exactly that has happened. And so I guess to answer your question is, is that fitness? Like, let's look at fitness 10 years ago, you know, 15 years ago, what was it? What was the fitness industry? I mean, it was, it was NordicTrack, it was the ThighMaster. You know, it was these, it was.

Like bodybuilding or aerobics or marathoning. Right. I think those are kind of like the big three.

And now fitness has become like as common as coffee, you know, to quote unquote. Like, if we're taking a sampling of the top 1000 followed Instagram and social media, iconic people, right? And I'm not talking celebrities. I'm talking like, you know, the people that kids are looking up to that, that housewives are saying, oh, I wish I was like that. You know, whatever. We look at those types of people and I would say you and I are in that kind of a classification. I mean, we both have a fairly large audience. We're both doing something on a grand scale. They have this like, thread of fitness and the fitness is part of their life. Like for you putting a rope 100 foot up in a tree and climbing up it is just as normal as, you know, the guy who goes and gets his coffee in the morning. It's just part of your routine, it's part of your daily life. It's part of what you do to feel a certain way, to have the lifestyle that you have. And so fitness is now becoming part of the formula to a happy, successful life, which it's always been. But again, understanding where we're going, not where we've been is the key. It's always been there, but now what we're doing with it is we're creating the illusions of grandeur in that space. For you to climb that rope up a tree 100 foot is probably an exaggeration. It's probably 40ft, whatever. But for you to climb that rope, it wasn't just that you threw that rope up one day and then just did it. I mean, it was a process for you to get to that point. You know, it's a process to do a spartan race. It's a part process to do a death man race. It's a process to do things that these fitness individuals make look like it's just an everyday thing. And so a person, let's take a child, a 15 year old child who's dealing with a parent who is, you know, everything's processed food, everything is a processed sugar. Going out to eat means McDonald's. Those are stereotypical mid American type families. And there's nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying. But then that child is suffering with all the things that they're dealing with, the 1 billion impressions that they're getting in their life of ad materials and all this stuff and all these pictures and bikini shots and selfies and all this stuff, and then they find fitness and they say, wow, this makes me feel better, this makes me feel good. But maybe let's take it as a girl. They're a size six, okay? And they're a healthy size six. And they can go and do their workouts and they feel good about themselves. Then they start placing themselves in a happy place, right? They start taking selfies, they start taking pictures, they start doing things. Then they start following gals like our wives, they start following other people who have had a journey of 10, 15 years to get where they are. And all of a sudden this 16 year old in New Hampshire, I don't know, making it up, who's finally started to feel good about themselves, now looks at somebody who's prophesying that health means, you know, xyz, green, smoothie, bikini, green smoothie, six pack, green smoothies, whatever. And I know this is pie in the sky thing, but what we're seeing happen is now that child sees exercise and does one of two things, gives up or goes extreme and starts just going like, as hard as they possibly can, and then that leads to failure because they can never live up to the status quo. They can never live up to this. Thus now you've created this recycle of depression, much like a bodybuilder has at that extreme. So is there any science to back this up? No. Will there be? Am I confident? Will I put my name on the line and say that there will be? Yes. I guarantee in 10 years there will be some scientific study that's done. I'm starting to collect data now on all of this.

You mean a scientific study that shows that exercise, even when you're not over training, can cause you to become depressed if you miss your exercise session?

Yeah, depending on where. And I think the caveat to all of this is where is your mind in the purpose of your exercise? You know, again, if your mind is, I feel good, I want to live a healthy lifestyle, I want to be healthy, then I think you're going to be just fine. But if your mind starts there and then you get the social pressures that exist out in the marketplace that are true, that are there, that's where I see the danger. That's where I see. And we see it all the time. And that's why I said we'll start doing data. Will we do blood tests and things like that? No. But will we do pattern and behavioral data? Of course. But that's where I see the problem, and that's where it becomes the issue.

I agree with you. And I've actually seen data on changes in white matter, changes in the way that the amygdala is wired in something like body dysmorphic disorder. Right. It's very similar to ocd. You can actually change your brain, your ability to be satisfied. And also what happens is you wind up having like an OCD, like focus on your body and your muscles and your fitness. You know what? I'd like to hear what you think about this, but I think that from an evolutionary standpoint or like a survival standpoint or an ancestral standpoint, that there is a certain amount of benefit to not feeling good unless you've moved physically. Because everything from hunting to farming to gathering to surviving to providing would be dependent upon you getting out and moving around and by, by not doing so and by feeling crappy. If you don't do. So, you know, it's kind of like a built in survival mechanism to just like get out of bed and go, go make stuff happen, right? So, so I think that, you know, and I want to make sure that I clarify that, right, like we're not talking about lowering your level of physical activity during the day so that you don't become dependent on it. But I think there's a, there's a big, big difference, right, between me, like standing at a standing workstation while I'm talking to you and making it a point, because I do this, right, Making it a point to walk down to my mailbox a few times a day rather than driving my car, even though my mailbox is like, it's like a quarter mile down the road and engaging in light, low level physical activity during the day. And I know that it keeps me happy, but it's not something that is wrapped up in fitness or in looking good or in a six pack. And what I've always said to people is that I don't think that what I do is healthy. I don't think the Spartan races and Ironman and stuff like that is healthy for me. I do it to put a notch in my belt, to scratch an itch, to get out of the office, to get dirty, to get in nature. It's part of my living, it is part of my identity. But ultimately I think that to be happy, all you really have to do, and they've shown this in the latest book Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, that you need love and you need relationships and you need family and you need real food and all this stuff. But then the other thing that you need is just regular amounts of physical activity during the day. That can be gardening, pushing a wheelbarrow around, building a rock wall, whatever. And it has nothing to do with whether or not you look good. It has more to do with what you've created, what you've produced, who you've provided for. And so I think there's that distinction, right, between whether or not you're exercising for your body or you're exercising for something very functional. And I know I'm kind of going on and on here, but that is one of the reasons that I've personally gotten more into the hunting scene and that what I consider to be the most appropriate form of functional fitness, going out, hiking, being in nature, getting an animal, bring it back to your family. Same thing with wild edibles. I'm doing a lot more foraging now with my children. And I think that Kind of stuff, like having a purpose, a greater purpose for your movement makes what some people call exercise, what others would call physical activity, more appropriate. And I think that when you stop doing that stuff and if you completely lie around, yeah, you might become depressed, you might feel crappy. You might show some of those same signs and symptoms of depression that the person who's going to the gym for two or three hours feels when they stop exercising. But I think that it's kind of like for two entirely different reasons. That you feel crappy.

No. And it's wholeheartedly agree. And I think that there's a lot of. A lot of power in what you just said. I did a keynote called on the Power of Dirt and the Psychological Power of Dirt. And everything you just talked about, we forget. And you made up. You know, you brought up those. Some of those points that we need. We need to fill needed. We need to feel appreciated, we need to feel loved. We need to have food, we need to have shelter and movement. And what's interesting is. And we also have to have this sense of accomplishment, and there's nothing that is more satisfying to the human psychology than us producing something that benefits someone else. So the act of service, right? And when you think about dirt and you think about farming and you think about, you know, all these different things, what power is in growing a tree, you know, and again, it takes time. And this is a maturity thing. You go through this and, you know, you finally step back. But, you know, you think of the childhood. If you were lucky enough to have a childhood home that has been and is still in your family, you can. All right, now, I could do a whole thing with everybody right now is I could have you mentally go to that home and mentally see a tree that has been a part of your life since forever. You can remember it forever. And where does that tree come from? And who planted that tree? And maybe you planted that tree. You know, maybe there was something that you did that with your father, and maybe your father's not here anymore, but that tree is there. And that's part of your identity, your existence makes you feel good. Just walking by that tree gives you a rush, an endorphin, and it's a chemical reaction. And so the power of dirt is amazing. You know, getting out in dirt, planting a garden, doing that, feeding your family, as you said, foraging, going out, experiencing it, doing all these things. And physical exercise, physical exercise. My recommendation to people is that do whatever. Physical exercise is easy to implant into your daily life. So everything you just mentioned I hate gyms. I've never liked gyms. It's not because of any one particular thing. I'm just not a gym guy. I don't like to go to the gym because to me, that's XYZ out of my day, where I don't. Yeah, I'm exercising and I'm feeling good, but, you know, there's a million other things. I have an obstacle course in my backyard. That's my gym. Every morning I get up, I go run my obstacle course, you know, and it's got everything from climbing trees, throwing spears and lifting rocks. Like, you know, that's just something that I like to do because it was fun. But I will tell people wholeheartedly, the big. The. The more adrenaline that I got out of all of it and, you know, all the excitement and everything was actually building the dang course that was more entertaining to me than running the course. If I could build my course over and over and over again, that's what I would do. You know, if. And it. I'm telling you, that was physically, you know, that was. There was some physical exhaustion and putting pulleys, you know, 40 foot up in trees and, you know, moving rocks around and digging holes and all this stuff. So I was, you know, I was getting all of that. But my point is, is that if you're somebody who. And I'm sure 99% of everyone who's listening to this is into exercise and fitness and everything, but look at your fitness schedule and figure out what. And I love what you said. Identify what's not healthy and you're just doing because it's a notch in your belt or just whatever reason. And then identify what is healthy and what is the movement that's creating that healthy thing. And just be honest with yourself to your own mind. Tell yourself like, I'm doing this over here because it puts a notch in my belt because it, you know, satisfies some something for me. And it's okay to, quote, unquote, have those kind of emotions. There's nothing wrong with that. It's identifying that and being honest with it so that the subconscious and the conscious are communicating in your brain so that you're not creating a chemical warfare. You're not creating a chemical war inside of your own mind. And then focus, like you said, on the simple things that will just keep you healthy. You know, standing desks save lives. More people die sitting than smoking. I mean, we have this data now. Taking a walk is the first thing we tell every suicidal child, every suicidal youth that comes into our program. We tell them, take a walk. It's the first thing we tell them to do. I do marriage counseling. Very little, but I've helped a few just based on the fact, like, we'll have a child who comes in the program, and then mom and dad want help. And one of the things that I'll tell mom and dad to do is take a walk every night and take a walk and talk about the things they love about life, the things they love about each other. And it's. It's this. You know, they're like, oh, why can't we just do that? Inside, it's hot. Outside, it's this, it's that, it's cold. It's whatever. I'm like, just take a damn walk. Because in doing that again, it's a simple act of movement. It's creating that. Those chemicals and those endorphins. And then they're able to, you know, take all that positive energy, and they start remembering things. And I've had, you know, and again, probably only about 30, 40 couples that I've helped. But out of the 30, 40 that have done the walk, I'd say about 80% of them reply back to me. And the woman, the wife will. She'll be the one that tells me that. She's like, you know, it was weird. It's like halfway through the walk, he put his arm around me, he held my hand. He made me feel like I was safe again. It's like, wow, you know, and I'm getting to the point now, and I don't mean this facetiously. I'm like, wow. So surprising. That just blows my mind, you know, but it's not. It's simple. I think science is simple. And as human beings, we want to make everything complex. So we're trying to hack the body, which I think is beneficial. I think that's part of evolution, as you said. I think that we can always become better, But I think we need to also push the pause button sometimes and see why. Are we becoming better? Are we becoming better because we want to have more metals on our wall? Are we becoming better because we want to have a stronger family, a stronger bond, a better sex life with our partner? Do we want to feel more connected with our children? You know, those things. Those things are amazing. And as you said, like a Spartan race. I mean, I tore my freaking ligament in my last Spartan race, in my thumb, of all places, you know, so, like, that's not a healthy place to, you know, maybe be all the time. But hey, I love doing them and they're fun and I love meeting guys like you. So just be honest with yourself as to why you're doing it. And I think that is what's going to change the landscape of the fitness world. But it's going to happen. I don't think it's blue sky stuff. I think we're going to see the same thing we saw happen with food is going to happen with fitness. And it's just natural. And I think it's the evolution of social media and self glorification. And bodybuilders were kind of a, you know, they were a secret group of people that only the people in that niche really paid attention to. And now we have social media which makes almost everybody a bodybuilder. I mean, I think that that's kind of a clarity point, is that everyone is kind of going through that same thing that a bodybuilder would go through in a competition state. You know, that hundred days before competition that bodybuilders went through psychologically. And then the post, you know, the post performance, the depression that the bodybuilders went through after they performed and were on the stage. I mean now just think of Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat and Vine and blah blah, blah. It's kind of like a 24, 7 cycle of bodybuilder. So it could be interesting what we're going to see happen in the next five to ten years here.

Yeah, it is interesting. It's tough because some of the stuff like selfies and social proof and extrinsic motivation can be used for good and can be used to drive you off the couch and get you well and burn fat and reverse diabetes and heart disease and all these good things.

Exactly.

But then at the same time It's a catch 22. It's a double edged sword. So it's interesting.

I think it just comes down to honesty. The first step in my module for psychology, which is a free program, if anyone's going through anything, it's a free, I don't know, I've written 365 emails, like six hours of videos. I just had Tony Robbins guys go through it and said it was some of the best stuff. I was flattered, I was awesome. But it's a free thing. It's called Superhuman life. And that is, it's not like.com, it's.life. so superhuman life, totally free. I get nothing out of it. It's all there for you. And my first module that I talk about is Honesty and the power of honesty. And we as children have been taught how important it is to be honest. Don't steal, don't cheat, don't do this stuff. Be honest with your fellow man, all these things. But the hardest person to be honest with is yourself. And in that moment of honesty comes clarity. And that's where you start the journey of power. And that's where these things don't affect you as much. Caveat. We're human beings, we're all going to have our moments. But when you can be honest with yourself, that's when everything changes. So just be honest with yourself about why you're in fitness, why you're so aggressive, why you're so passionate, why you're so this. Be honest with yourself and then create your own, whatever it may be. Some people need to put something on social media so they have that. Some people talk to their wives about it, have some kind of checkpoint so that you can say, hey, I was honest about this. I told this person, manipulate your mind to work for you, not against you. And that's it. That's what I learned. And I'm trying to bestow on as many people as I can. I have a goal of reaching 25 million people before I die. Be. You know, 25 has a very significant number in my life. But I just, I. I was finally able to realize that the manipulation my brain was doing against me and making me feel sad and depressed and all these things that happened to me were me, I'm a victim, and all this horribleness and me, me, me. And it's just awful. All that stuff that was controlling me, if I could just, just spin it just 180 degrees and just spin it and see things as I was the only one that could go through that. I'm a hero. I'm powerful. I'm enough. I'm strong. I can make this. I can do this. If I can manipulate that and manipulate my mind and then use all the things that God put on this planet, from food to exercise to relationships, all these different things. If I could just figure this out and simplify it, then I can be happy. And at 16 years old, that was my mindset. And it took, you know, no, like, whatever. It took about 10 years to really master it and really feel like, you know what? I'm in control. I do believe this. This is where I'm at. And then to re engineer that and go back and say, okay, what worked? What didn't I think, you know, figured out? Like, look, this can be replicated. I'M not some superhuman, you know, weird anomaly. I'm just like everybody else who's, you know, had a tough life or who is going through a tough time in life. So if we can just package this into a simplistic formula, then can it work? And two years ago I went on that journey and, you know, now we're in seven countries and thousands of people and, you know, all these things are happening and youth and adults. I mean, it's, it's, it's working and it's working very, very effectively. And again, I was guinea pigging people along the way. I've got a lot of my good friends who, you know, who call me like, you know, who tell me like, you know, thanks for making me your guinea pig. But it works. And it's brain hacking, it's hacking, it's all that stuff. So I think it's good that we evolve in that status because we can become less dependent on artificial substances. And the less dependent we are on anything that's artificial, the more dependent and the more we have ourselves to blame, ourselves to respect, which just leads to a healthier and happier community inside of our families, which leads to happier communities in our cities and our states and then our country and then eventually our world. But it's got to start with ourselves. And anytime it's artificial, that means it can be manipulated just as easily as it can be, you know, created and a drug and a body, you know, the mind. And we know this. Why do we have to have vaccinations every year? Why is the flu, you know, vaccination completely altered and modified every year? It's because the body, you know, and the flu virus itself adapts because it's artificial, you know, so anyway, we could talk for hours about it, but that's just what I would tell people is, is get honest with yourself as to why you're doing what you're doing. And then really start focusing in on, with that honesty and that clarity, where do I need to be spending a lot of my energy and my time so that I'm moving myself forward, not getting myself stuck.

Yeah. What is the website for the service that you provide to kids who are depressed? Is that your human problem?

Yeah, it's a human project. So a is an apple, a humanproject.com. and we're building, we have a whole backend system which you and I need to talk about in nauseam. We have 52 lessons that the youth go through. We have a point system, we have a summer camp that we're starting next year. And I'm looking for about 300 guest lecturers that would come into the system and create content for these youth. And it's all about empowering youth. You know, it's. I've been in the self help world for a while. I dabbled in that. You know, we didn't. I mean, I have a whole entrepreneurial story. I became very successful in the entrepreneurial world. And we've just kind of combined everything into this, into the system. And it's very, very effective and it's working very, very well. And our problem isn't inventory. We can run a social media campaign and have a thousand youth enroll in our system in 24 hours. This is an epidemic. This is something that people are dealing with. It's getting more and more conversation about suicide and depression is happening more. Robin Williams death was a huge movement in a positive direction for people talking about depression, talking about suicide. Much like raw food diets and stuff started getting people to talk about bowel movements 20 years ago. Now people are starting to talk more about psychology and depression and feelings of worthlessness. And we're seeing things we've never seen before. You know, our children are spending more time in artificial light than natural light. That's having an effect on their brain. It's having an effect on their chemical development. They're spending more time in front of artificial screens than they are outside. Kids don't play with blocks and mud anymore. You know, they're playing with iPads. And I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm saying it's different. And with that, different is coming. You know, we're having to figure out how to, how to work inside of those things. And it's all new. You know, we've never had to deal with this before. We've never had this in the history of humanity. And so it's leading our children down paths of confusion of self identity issues. You know, it's just, there's a lot going on in our world. There's a lot of noise, you know, anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 depending on who you talk to. Ads are being displayed to our children every single day. Our kids are texting between three to five thousand times a month. And again, we were taught from a very young age, if you really want to know something, you say it, you see it, you write it, right? That's how you would study for a test. Say it, see it, write it. That's what our kids do all the time. And think of what they're saying, think of what they're seeing and think of what they're writing. And, you know, so there's just a lot of new challenges that are happening to our children right now. And statistically, in the United States, there's 25 million children who are living in some type of dysfunctional situation, whether that's a divorced home, whether that's abuse. One in three girls by the age of 18 will have some kind of sexual assault that is given against them in their lives. These are just statistics that are used in agendas. And I'm not a huge statistic guy, but it does give us a glimpse into the world that we're dealing with. So my whole mission and what I focus on in my life and my story and all these different things and the years of time I've spent studying the brain and psychology and nutrition and exercise is now put into helping youth realize the simplicity of they're enough and giving them the tools and the power that they create. That it's not dependent on me. It's not dependent on our system. It's not dependent on a drug. It's dependent on themselves and their own will to survive and live and succeed and operate. And I could tell tons of stories about that. It works. It works. Yeah.

Cool. It's good stuff, man. I know you love to talk about this stuff, and you've got a great. Got a great YouTube TED talk. And I'll link to a lot of the things that we've discussed today over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com WesleyChapman if you want to check out Wesley's Human Project or learn more about everything from coffee enemas to body dysmorphic disorder, I'll put some good resources out there for you. Wesley, you've been really generous with your time. I appreciate you coming on the show. I know you're packing right now for a trip to Las Vegas. So I know you took some time out of your day to present this stuff to us. I hear the passion, man, and I appreciate what you're doing.

Hey, you too, man. It's awesome. We've got to get together and hang out and play on each other's obstacle courses. I know you've got one up there, so.

That's right.

We gotta hang out. Next time you're in Southern California, let me know. And vice versa.

Awesome. We'll make it happen. All right, well, folks, Again, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com WesleyChapman if you want to learn more about Wesley and grab the show notes for this episode. And until next time. Thanks for listening in and have a Great Week.

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