Kill Brain Fog with Dr. Dana Cohen

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Oh my God. What did I get myself into? This is way more complicated than I ever thought. They were all lead poisoned and kids had permanent damage from it because their water was loaded with lead. She blew my mind, completely blew my mind. I was like, what? Eight glasses a day is not the way I think a green smoothie a day is a fantastic way to get those electrolytes, those minerals. I don't have a lot of good things to say about alcohol. Always start with hydration. Start there.

Welcome to Lead on Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode, I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

You're going to love today's special guest. You're going to learn that hydration is directly related and linked to decision making. Also, coffee is there to hydrate you. Yes, you heard me right. Coffee is hydrating. You're going to hear all today from Dr. Dana Cohen. For over two decades, Dr. Cohen has been on the leading edge of integrative and functional medicine, guiding thousands of patients through protocols that initiate its cellular repair and restore balance to the body. We talk about alcohol, we talk about coffee, we talk about how many glasses of water a day is the right. Some people, she said, only need one glass of water a day to be fully hydrated. So please sit back and enjoy the show.

Foreign.

A huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to chat to you. And it's about a topic that is something I've been thinking about and playing around with for a long time. And I know that it has a massive impact on my psychology, definitely on my physiology. And I'm sure there's probably long term effects if I neglect this. And you know, in recent years there's been a couple of big shifts I've made to give you some context. So one, I'm plant based, so I'm not going to say I'm a vegan, but I'm plant based, 99 plus percent. And just over three years ago I decided to go alcohol free. And for an Irish guy, that's a big move.

Yeah. Congrats. So good.

Thank you. So hydration is our topic, is our key focus. And I know the listener that's listening right now is going, oh, what did I eat today? When did I last have some water? Am I hydrated? How do I know? And what is the consequence of chronic dehydration? So without further ado, let's, let's jump into hydration. So what got you on this road, this, this journey of understanding hydration?

So actually we're talking maybe five, six, seven years ago, my co author of the book Quench, Gina Brea, had come into my office asking to speak to me about hydration. And honestly I thought at times she was going to sell me some kind of Kansai scheme.

Purifier. I don't know, we had a mutual friend. So I said, sure, come on in. And so she came in and talked to me about the work of Dr. Gerald Pollock. Have you heard of him?

I have, yes.

Yeah. So Dr. Pollock is the world renowned water researcher based out of University of Washington in Seattle. And he has discovered that there's a fourth phase of water. And so she sat down and started to talk to me about this and she blew my mind, completely blew my mind. I was like, what a fourth phase of water? I mean we learned in elementary school water exists in three phases, liquid ice and vapor. And that's it. So now she's telling me there's a fourth phase. And it turns out that there's probably even more than that, that we're kind of learning. And so as she's talking and she had studied how desert communities hydrate, she's an anthropologist. And so we were just talking and the truth is I am an integrative medical doctor, meaning I try to keep people off of medications. I've been focusing on people's diets for 25 years, really looking at what they're eating, knowing hydration is important, but never really like, not to this extent. And I was like, Gina, I said, this is fascinating. I said, do you want to write the book? And she's like, oh my God, yeah. We never knew it was even going to go there. So we started that. The book is then actually published four years ago. It's been out for a long time, it continues to sell Hydration is finally becoming in vogue and everybody's talking about it. Before my book, it was probably 20 years ago, the last hydration book that was written and that was by a very interesting doctor, Batman they called him, which we talk about in the book.

That's when it started. And within, I don't know, two or three months I started to look at the research and started to really dive in and I was like, oh my God, what did I get myself into? This is way more complicated than I ever thought. The science of water, H2O, the simplest molecule in the world turns out to be incredibly.

Just incredibly confusing and nobody agrees. And even hydration, there's no way to measure simple hydration in somebody. It turned out to be a way bigger task than I ever imagined. We got through it. I think we wrote a really user friendly book that it turns out has been helping a lot of people that I'm quite, you know, I'm getting feedback and so I'm really proud of it. And only in January of this year. So a few months ago did the did a very big study by the NIH came out and said that low grade chronic dehydration is a major cause of chronic disease. I've been saying it for five years. The first thing we must do before we.

Take on any diet or any changes is first learn how to hydrate. Because dehydration is a major. Is the first thing we have to look at when you're trying to treat and prevent any chronic disease. You have to start here. I feel a little justified that that big NIH study came out just a few months ago.

We've started a bit of a trend.

You really have. Yeah, you have. And it's incredible. And you're right, hydration is a topic that lots of people are talking about. You can see it trending online. I'm certainly seeing it within the professional communities that I'm working, whether that's athletes or in a corporate setting. People are really starting to go, oh, this matters. And we talk about that. If we are low grade chronic dehydration, it can lead to the disease. What else can that be impacting short and medium term in terms of focus and productivity?

Great question. The things that we all know, but I'm going to say again, so that we all remember is things like headaches, constipation, brain fog, think about cognition, brain fog and performance.

The big number Everybody throws out 2% dehydrated, which can happen to us very easily at any point during the day, becoming 2% dehydrated. Which is not a lot. We start to lose our cognitive ability. We start to get a little brain fog. So, you know, those are the, those are the big things. And then even further.

Dry skin.

Stiffness, muscle aches.

Headaches. Did I mention headaches? Oh, fatigue, afternoon fatigue. I love that. Because for years, you know, even myself, for years as a doctor, I'd always be like, oh, your blood sugar is dropping. It must be your blood sugar in the afternoon, that's why you're becoming fatigued. I think probably 50% of those people, it's not blood sugar. Some people, your blood sugar's dropping after you eat, you have reactive hypoglycemia, that kind of thing. But I think most of those people, you're dehydrated.

And also people mistake hunger for.

Thirst. So that's the other reason that people think, oh, my blood sugar's dropping, I'm hungry, I got to eat. When you're really thirsty and you need to drink and stave that off to.

Keep that like kind of simple and kind of a stage where people can embrace it. When it's say 1:30 or 2:30 in the afternoon, you've already had lunch an hour ago, and you start to feel hungry and peckish again. Do you think it would be smart then for us to go, hey, before I reach for the peanuts, before I reach for the bag of chips or the Mars bar, hey, I'm going to just take a large glass of water. Is that a smart protocol?

100%, yes. It's always, it's always a good idea to drink. Try water first, try hydrating first. But an even better thing in the long term is to really look at what you're eating, you know, so what was that lunch? Was it a hydrating lunch? Was it full of vegetables and fiber and things that help you hold on to that hydration? You know, so, so we'll talk at some point about some tips to sort of stave off that thirst and hunger before it even happens. Because that's, it's, you know, I'm a real believer in that 80, 20 rule, meaning give me, I'll give you a nutrition plan. Give me 80%. And I'm happy because I do think, you know, diet is, is so over. It's so people, you know, and granted there are, I realize you're working with high end people, maybe athletes, leaders, that kind of thing. And that might be a whole different population, but my patient population are regular people that need to live in this world and myself included.

So give me 80% as far as hydration, I need you to stay on top of that day in and day out, hour by hour. It's the one thing that I'm a real stickler on and it's not hard at all. It's really not hard. So once you learn how to do it and you learn and you're feeling better and you know what it feels like, then it becomes easy and you're, and you're eating well, you're eating very well, hydrating.

Meals, then you don't, you don't need to think about it. There's no, you know, we talked a little bit earlier before we started about tracking your hydration. I'm not convinced that that's so important if after. It may be for some people. I don't want to turn people off because some people like that. But as you know, there are people who hate that and can't do it in any shape or form. So I'm here to say that it might not be necessary to track it. If you are hydrating well, eating well, choosing your meals and your food wisely, and you're moving and there's no other contributing factors like you're not on medications that are, that are dehydrating you, or you're an elite athlete or you're doing Bikram yoga four or five times a week, that hot yoga. So there are obviously factors that go in there. But I'm not convinced that we need to track and I'm also not convinced that, you know, one of the taglines in the book is eight glasses a day is not the way, because there are some people that only need one glass of water throughout the whole day.

I do know those people. They are people that, in addition to that one glass of water though, have a green smoothie a day, eat tons of salad and vegetables, move. Just have a really clean diet, super healthy. It's rare, but there are some people that need one glass of water a day and then there are some people that need more. I think the more important thing is living in your body, knowing what your body needs, knowing what it feels like to feel perfectly hydrated.

Many of us are just cut off from our necks down, ignoring the signals, ignoring our bodies. So stop ignoring and doing some of those things that we'll talk about, especially movement stuff we'll get into a little bit.

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Good. Thank you for sharing that. And that's fascinating to think that there are humans on this planet that simply need one glass of water a day. And it's so funny you say eight glasses a day because I grew up in Ireland and that was the saying. I came to New Zealand and that was a saying. Spent a lot of time in Canada. That was the saying. You got to drink your eight glasses a day. So I know the listener is thinking the same thing I'm thinking right now. And that is okay. How do I figure out the point at which I am hydrated? Or how do I know when I'm dehydrated? So what are the signals? How do we start to become more attuned to our body?

Yeah, I'm going to give you like the best thing, the one best piece of advice I can give to somebody for a signal for dehydration.

I gave a few in the book. It turns out they're not very good, meaning pinch the top of your skin. If it stands up for more than a millisecond, you're Dehydrated, there's people who have older skin that just, it doesn't make sense. The other thing, for years I believed checking the color of your urine is important. Now I still think that that's a little important because I know my first pee in the morning is concentrated. I know the color of that versus if I'm drinking a lot of water. It becomes clearer and clearer throughout the day. For me, that's good. If you take a B vitamin, it turns out that, that all bets are off because it colors your urine bright yellow. But even the color of your urine, people who are very concentrated, it turns out that the correlation is not perfect. With low grade dehydration. The best thing that you can do is we are meant, when we are waking in our awake hours, we are meant to urinate every two or three hours. If you're not getting up to pee every two or three hours, then you're not hydrating enough. And it's that simple.

I think that that is probably one of the best things to look at. I mean the other things are if you have other symptoms, if you're thirsty, once you're thirsty, you're too far gone. You shouldn't really wait for thirst. And in fact thirst is not a great signal because we've learned to override our thirst. We've learned to ignore our thirst because we want to be so productive and so in the moment or we want to take that eight hour drive. So we don't, we don't, you know, we don't want to have to stop to pee because we're so driven, Literally driven. So, so yeah, so the, the thirst is not a great, not a great signal as it turns out. And then the other thing is constipation, dry skin, headaches, brain fog, all the things that we talked about a little bit earlier. Stiff muscle, stiffness, muscle, you know, acheness, achiness are all those, those things. Then you're, you're dehydrated, you know.

Now what about the one big thing in my mind? So I started looking into this maybe four or five years ago was. I'm probably going to say it incorrectly, but it's a Kangen or Kanjan water. So is the quality of the water that we consume also important, not just the quantity?

Yeah, you know, I have to be honest, the Kangen water came across me a while ago and then I couldn't really speak on it right now. I think.

It turns out if you look at Dr. Pollack's work, if we are drinking structured water, meaning water Found in nature. Water that has more of structure in it.

And getting sunlight. Sunlight is a way that our body structures water. Then our water within our bodies can filter itself, which is interesting in and of itself. If we're eating more plants. I do think that the quality of water plays a role more.

In the.

Filtering of water. We don't want to be drinking chemicals. Of course that's important.

Quality. As far as maybe ph and that kind of thing, I think the jury is still out. I know, I know because I'm an advisor to essential water. So it's a ph water and they and I are very.

Careful about what we say when drinking a high PH water. We don't really know. There's no studies, there's not a lot of work or studies on it. I will say however that patients who say they start drinking high PH water.

They start to feel better. Now is it because they're hydrating better? I don't know. You know, I don't know. So I don't have a lot to say about the Kangen water. I do think that there may, you know, I have a lot of patients that swear by it also. But I don't, I don't have the science to give you a proper answer.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you. And in terms of chemicals, so I know we've got chlorine in our water main water here in New Zealand. So should we be doing our best to filter that stuff out before we drink it but also before it hits our skin in the shower or bath?

That's a good question. I don't filter my water, my shower water. I think that's a really, that's a real.

I haven't dived into that science as far as what's going on. I mean ideally in an ideal world, I want to say yes and I realize I'm talking to super achievers.

So. Yeah, I mean ideally you want, if you could afford it, you want to get a whole body water filter, do it. I think, I do think that there's something there because I don't think, you know, but I think at the very least filter what we're drinking for sure. I mean we know that, you know, the people in Flint, Michigan, I don't know if you know that whole crisis of where they were all lead poisoned and kids had permanent damage from it because their water was loaded with lead.

There is a great, I don't think it's going to exist there. There's a great website here called the Environmental Working Group and you can put in where you Live. And it tells you what chemicals are in your water. So you can filter your water based on what most chemicals are in your water.

The one thing, and I do think there's plenty of research on this is that fluoride, we fluoridate our water. We put fluoride in our water systems. Fluoride is directly toxic to our thyroid. And people are starting to now come back on that. And I think there's a few places in the states, but Portland, Oregon, I believe, is one that now filter out fluoride. But fluoride is a toxin. It started as a toxin and it became a thing because of teeth health. But it was only ever really meant to be put applied topically to your teeth, not taken internally. So, yeah, there are there. And then there's other chemicals. There's. There's that hexagonal chromium, which is the stuff of. What's her name of the, the Julia Roberts movie in the book.

Yes. Thank you. Yeah, Erin Brockovich. I mean, that's very much still in. In above what the.

FDA says is acceptable in our water systems. You know, it's not as high as it was in those stories, but it's still there and it's. And it's higher than what's considered safe.

So we have no fluoride here in our city in the water. And so dentists always say here for us not to be using mouth rinse and not to rinse the toothpaste out of our mouth at the end, they say, because if we do rinse out the toothpaste and we're getting no fluoride for our teeth, and so the teeth become brittle and stuff. So it's very interesting that different places take a different stance on that. So what kind of filter do you have?

Oh, I use a reverse osmosis over the counter filter. So it's just, it's so the water that I drink is reverse osmosis. So everything's taken out of it, including.

Minerals. So there are you. You might. And the one I have does replace some minerals into it. So that is also. So reverse osmosis is probably one of the best. That is the best way to get rid of everything, including fluoride. And, you know, I think people can also check that. Ewg.org environmentalworking group.org they have lists of water filters based on your budget. And so people can. Can check it from anywhere. So it would, it would tell you, you know, so if you have this stuff, then a charcoal filter is fine, like a Brita filter. I don't Know what brands you have there in your thing might be fine. It's better than nothing. And you don't have fluoride, so it might be okay for you.

I'm going to look into that. And is there such a thing as over hydration?

Yeah, there really is.

I used to think that and only very sick people with a disease.

Can overhydrate to the point where their electrolytes become off balance.

I see almost on a weekly basis, at least one or two patients that when I look at their blood work, their sodium and their chloride are off and they're low.

When I question them how much water you're drinking. Oh, my God, I drink a ton of water. I'm drinking water all day long, all day long. And they're over hydrating to the point where their electrolytes are being flushed out of their bodies. I think it's more common than we think. And it's a little worrisome that not that long ago there was a big water gallon challenge going around. Drink a gallon of water a day. I don't know how much that is. I don't know. In liters or liters, I have no idea. But it's a lot. It's a lot. It's double of probably the eight glasses of water. It's double of eight glasses. So it's 16 glasses of water a day.

Wow.

Yeah. And that was based on. I don't know if this is true. I think Tom Brady may have started that or somehow got, you know, somehow messed up from what he was saying he does now. We're not elite athletes like him, you know, and, and he has people that follow him. And, you know, so. So there was this drink a gallon of water challenge going around a day. And I think that that can be a problem. And, and what happens when you lose electrolytes? So you're drinking this bulk water with no electrolytes in it, right. And you're peeing out all these electrolytes and you're sweating it out and you're. And you're not replacing those electrolytes. So.

At the least you could get some leg cramps and brain fog thinking, oh, I'm thirsty, I need to drink more water. Which is not the case. To the worst. Where you can get cardiac electrophysiology like ekg, arrhythmias in your heart. It can be as dangerous as that. That is extraordinarily rare.

But, you know, it's. If we're drinking a gallon of water every single day and you don't know what you're doing, it can happen.

Yeah, that's good to know. And yeah, everyone that's listening right now, they're all different people with different lifestyles and they eat different things and they live in different places. So we've got some listeners that are here in New Zealand, we've got others that are in Estonia and the uk, all over. So obviously humidity will play a part. They're a household, whether they have heat pumps, air conditioners, what they're consuming. So for the person that's listening right now, how can they try to get a fix on am I hydrated? And you know, do I have the electrolytes and the different minerals that I need? Where's the starting point?

So I think the starting point is it's always going back to simple stuff. Live in your body. How do you feel? Do you, you know, do you, do you feel great? Do you feel fantastic? Can you move with fluidity? Are you fluid? Are you, are you, you know, are you, is your skin good? Are you.

Constipated? Headaches, all those things? Okay, so that's, that's the basic stuff. Are you getting up to pee every two or three hours while you're awake, during your waking hours? You know, we create a hormone at night that stops us from peeing in the middle of the night. Right. So, so if all of that is there and, and, and am I eating well, am I eating, you know, a plant centric diet? So I am not a vegan, nor am I a vegetarian, but I do tend to, I have a few rules. So I'll give you some rules for these people. Number one, you could start your day by drinking eight to 16 ounces of water. So one to two glasses of water first thing in the morning. I tend to put a pinch of real salt in there. When I say real salt, not just sodium, not table salt, it has to have the full spectrum of minerals. And that comes from either like sea salt, pink salt, pink Himalayan salt, or rock salt. There's a brand I love here in the States called real salt. It comes from Utah, from the rock mines in Utah. So a pinch of salt right there, you're getting a full spectrum of minerals and a little squeeze of lemon for taste, for more minerals, for a little vitamin C, you know, that kind of thing. So that's a great way to start your day. And that's. It turns out that's how desert people hydrate. So they, they front load their water because they certainly don't roam the deserts with, you know, water bottles. Maybe they do Nowadays, but they didn't back then.

So. Yeah. So front load your water is one way to start. I tell people to drink a glass of water before every meal. So that's just something you don't have to think about before you start your meal. Drink a glass of water maybe signals you to be filled up a little bit. There's some research in people who are trying to lose weight. They lose a little more weight when they do that. But it's also just. For me, it's just a little habit to not think about. Then I know I'm getting a few glasses of water in.

I have a salad with my lunch and dinner, and sometimes that salad is just iceberg lettuce because I can't think about it. I was like, all right, I got to get it in. Let me just get some iceberg lettuce in. Then the really big deal. The thing that I think is a fantastic habit, I think that everybody should get into, because the truth is, 97% of all households have a blender in their house.

I think a green smoothie a day is a fantastic way to get those electrolytes, those minerals, that hydration in your diet. When I say a green smoothie, that means greens, whatever greens you choose. Celery, lettuce, Swiss, chard, kale, whatever greens you choose with water and then whatever else you want to put in there. If you want to put a half an apple for flavor and a little.

Ginger for flavor. If you want to throw some. But that would be a real foundation. Then you could get fancy and you could throw seeds in there for protein, hemp seeds or something. When you start to then do protein powder and yogurt, it becomes a meal. Right? So this is more of a midday sort of hydration, green smoothie, easy, delicious thing to do, really super hydrating. And what a great way to get a mixture of vegetables in your diet. Concentrated.

That's a great way to look at it because I'm of the mind that hydration equals glass of water. And it's really nice to actually be challenged on that and go, no. Hydration means all of the factors that you're consuming. And that's environmental, that's food, that's movement. I think that's fascinating. And you talked about this chemical at night that gets released into our system that essentially stops us from peeing. So I have this kind of like self imposed rule that like three hours, two. Two or three hours before bed, I don't have any more liquid because I don't want to get up at 3am to go to the toilet, I like to try and sleep through to like five or six. So what is that chemical? How does it work? And you know, should we be thinking about when our last glass or cup of tea or glass of wine is?

So maybe. Yes. So the. It's a, it's a hormone. It's called a antidiuretic hormone. ADH or vasopressin is the other name. So when you, A diuretic means you take a diuretic and it helps, it makes you pee, right? So the hormone is called adh, antidiuretic hormone. And it basically does that. And as we get older, though, like many hormones, it also goes down and, you know, so that's why elderly people, as they get older, they tend to wake up more in the middle of the night to pee. I think once again, it's so individualized. Like you may have, you may do okay if you have a little more, you know, if you don't wait three hours.

I don't know your body.

You have to find that balance of what works for you and what's right for you.

I don't have the answer. Sometimes I have people, I'll sometimes have them add a little chia seeds to their last drink because if they like to drink up until sometimes the chia seeds, their fiber, so they also hold their weight in water. It tends to hold onto the water in your body a little bit longer too, because it's more cellularly, cellularly dehydrating, not dehydrating, hydrating. So there are little things that you can do, sometimes even a little, you know, a cup of tea, 4 ounces of tea, whatever a small cup is. If you, you know, it's not plain water, there are other things in there that could be helping just to hold onto that water a little bit better. So sometimes that's okay. Alcohol, on the other hand, I don't think is a good idea. It doesn't help anybody to sleep. So I think alcohol is.

I hate to say it, I don't have a lot of good things to say about alcohol. I'm somebody who said we all like to live in this world and whatever it is. So when you choose alcohol, you're making a clear decision. There's nothing hydrating about it. It is in fact dehydrating. And.

Also, it also messes with blood sugar. So people, it's just a known thing when you drink alcohol, you're going to wake up in the middle of the night. You don't get a good night's Sleep. So yeah, so yeah, I would stop many hours earlier.

That's good to know. And the other thing I always wanted to know was the temperature of water. So I actually really don't like super cold water and I actually prefer to run a hot glass of water and drink it warm. The temperature that we drink it doesn't make any difference to how it's consumed by the body.

If you asked a practitioner of Chinese medicine, they would absolutely say yes. I am not a Chinese medicine practitioner and I have the most incredible practitioners that I refer out to and I'm a big believer. I get acupuncture all the time. I believe in it. But it is a very different kind of medicine than what I practice and what I know. So in my mind, if you're not going to drink water because you only like it cold, then go ahead and drink it cold.

But I couldn't tell you from a real physiological standpoint if it has any bearing. I think there's something, I mean I think these people have been. Chinese medicine has been around for centuries and I think there is something to it, but I don't know what it is.

Absolutely. And for those that are way more active, they're ultra marathon runners or they're doing five F45 workouts a week. What, what advice do you have for them around hydration?

So you know, I'd have to look back at this and it's in the book. I just haven't looked at it. I don't want to give wrong information but, but they're for especially endurance athletes and that kind of thing. You need to be weighing yourself before and after. How much weight have you lost with hydration? I mean there are very specific rules to follow when you are doing endurance athletes and those kind of things. Athletics and those kind of things. I do think those people should be doing electrolyte mixes. You know where you're. And there's quite a few on the market. You want ones that are all natural ingredients that don't have any artificial junk in it, colors and those kind of things. And I do have like a, a do it yourself one recipe in the book which is basically coconut water, maple syrup and.

Something else maybe lemon or something I'm forgetting salt. No. Yes, coconut water salt and lemon and maple syrup and a little lemon. But then there are really good ones. And full disclosure, I'm on the board of one called Cure Hydration that follows the world health organizations recommendations for a electrolyte replacement mix. And there are very specific recommendations. So the athletes, there are rules to follow. Like they should be looking at those things. They should be weighing themselves before and after. They should be hydrating every 15 minutes or so.

And it brings into. I'll tell you, there's a. Do you know Peter Atiaz? Have you. You know who he is?

Yes.

Yeah, he has. He had a really good podcast on hydration. He got into the physiology for athletes, which is not what I do, you know, so my. What I'm talking about is for all, all of us everyday folks. So there are some very specific things that you should be looking at for athletes. Because when I even talk about electrolyte replacements, we don't talk about sugar. We don't want sugar in most of our electrolyte replacements. Unless you're an athlete and you're doing sports, you need sugar, you need glucose, you know, so people have to really differentiate and especially athletes because they're hearing like, sugar is bad, but. And so then they're not doing it with their athletes, you know, with their athletics. So that's important to really. They need to look at what they're doing, what the sports are doing, and they're, they're easily found online. I can, I can probably send you some things when we're done too.

That'd be amazing. And what I'll do for the listener that's listening or watching right now on YouTube, I'm going to make sure I'm putting the show notes, a link to the book because I know there's lots of people going, I want to know more. I want to know all the details that Dana put in the book. So I'm going to put a link to that. Also link to Dana's website and any other resources you send me. I'll make sure and link those. The one thing I wanted to ask you was around decision making. So I believe that, you know, everything rises and falls on leadership. And leaders have a responsibility to make good decisions. And even when there's only bad options, they have to make the least bad decision out of all the options. So we look around as we see war, we see division, we see all these poor decisions being made from the top. I believe there is a connection between hydration and decision making. You talked right at the start of our conversation around cognition and the connection between cognitive impairment or cognitive decision making and hydration or dehydration. So if people are really dehydrated, can it impact their decision making abilities?

Absolutely. It's not even a question. It's proven scientific and at a very low level of dehydration. Just 2%. It affects our decision making. It affects our cognition. It's very interesting because.

We talk about even. How do I say this? When doctors are being.

Kids get a concussion, they get a head injury and they go to the ER room. Where am I going with this? I want to just. So they go to the emergency room.

And one of the things that doctors do in their physical exam is look for cognitive ability to say this is a concussion or not. But what they're not doing is rehydrating them first to see.

So, yeah, they can present very equally. A traumatic brain injury can present equally to dehydration.

Wow.

You know, so, so, yeah, so absolutely. Dehydration. And I just want to say it again. You have, you know, you always start with hydration. Start there before you go on any diet, any nutrition. It is the first and easiest step to good health. All else will follow. You'll start to make better decisions about your diet. You know.

So, yeah, it's a great question. And I do think that it's so.

Not talked about enough, 100%. And I just think that decisions. If you look at the origin of the word decide, it means to kill off all other options. Once you've made that decision, once you've said the thing and it goes out there, it's like, hey, I've done it. So decide. I think there's. To hydrate. You make better decisions when you're having to decide. So I'm really glad that you said it. Without a doubt. There's a connection between hydration and decision making.

Yeah, for sure.

Every leader right now is just hydrating as they're listening.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have a green smoothie a day. It's, it's. I think it's equivalent to drinking three times the amount of, of bulk water from a. From a cellular. That's my, that's my opinion. I can't prove that. That's great, but that's that, you know, from a cellular standpoint, a green smoothie, which is blended greens, again with water, is probably three times as hydrating because you're having the fiber from the greens, the minerals from the greens that help it get into your cells and hold onto it better than just plain bulk water.

There's going to be a listener listening right now. And this certainly applies in New Zealand, but I know certainly in North America and the UK, too. Coffee. So what impact does coffee have?

I love it. So the good news is that the studies show that anything under four cups of coffee is not a diuretic.

Wow.

Yeah. Now if I were to drink four cups of coffee, I would be on the wall. Like, I can't. So you have to realize there's caffeine, and caffeine is a drug. And caffeine can affect us in other ways. Right. From our adrenals and stress standpoint. But from a hydration standpoint, coffee counts as hydration.

That's amazing. You heard it here, folks. First, folks. Caffeine counts as hydration. Up to four cups.

Yeah. Up to four cups. Yeah.

Oh, there's some people celebrating right now.

I know, I know. That's always a big thing. A big thing. The other big thing that's talked about, I started the show also by saying iceberg lettuce. Do you have iceberg lettuce?

We certainly do.

You know, iceberg lettuce has been.

You know, like touted as. It has no nutritional value. It has nothing. There's no reason to eat iceberg lettuce. It's probably one of the most hydrating lettuces out there. So that's good news for people who like iceberg lettuce. Yeah.

And it's easy to get.

Yeah, yeah. I like it. I love the taste of it, you know. Yeah. It doesn't have much nutritional value, but it's super hydrating. You could see, you know, you've ever taken a bite out of iceberg. It's the. It's loaded with gel water. It's loaded with that structured water that Dr. Pollack has talked about.

That's incredible. Thank you. And in terms of your life's work, like, you've been working in this field for decades. So where are you taking it? Where are you heading? What are you going to be most proud of as you step into the next few decades of continuing this great work?

So I'm writing another book.

And this one is sort of the, you know, the obvious next step to hydration is how to get more whole foods into your diet. So. And it's, it's, you know, if you look at Quench, the first book, I used to say this. It's. It's simply a smoothie book. You know, there's a ton of recipes. It's way more than that. But if you had to just really get the gist of it, it's a book about smoothies because there's tons of smoothie recipes, there's a five day plan, there's, you know, but then we talk about the science of the structured water, we talk about science of movements, which I do want to talk about before we go. So the next step is then really, really focusing on that whole foods component. So.

How do we do that? How do we cheat and get more whole foods into our diet? Whole foods from nature. You know, we have to get the ultra processed foods out of our diets. And it turns out it's a little harder than I thought, even for myself. Like, as I'm writing the book, I'm going to the grocery store and I'm saying, all right, so how do I, how do I describe this to people? How do I. You know, it's harder than we think because there's a lot to think about when you're in the grocery store. So it's, it's, it's interesting on how trying to really, once again, make it as simple as possible for people. And it is pretty simple. I mean, whenever you could pull something out of the ground and eat it, that is the best thing that we can do. Once again, we all have to live in this world and really tell the difference between ultra processed. Minimally processed. Olive oil is a minimally processed food. It's a processed food.

But it's good for us.

That's really where I'm going.

The hydration stuff has become. I've gotten so much more out of talking about this than I ever imagined. And the feedback that I get has been.

Also going back to your first question. How did I get into writing about the book of hydration? The truth is, as a holistic doctor, functional medicine, alternative medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine, whatever the name du jour is, I've always known I had to write a book if I wanted a platform in this field.

And I could never find my platform. I didn't want to write a book on. I do a lot of hormones, I do a lot of thyroid. I didn't want to write another book on hormones and thyroid. They're out there. That book is going to say, well, you have to go see your doctor and get measurements and get blood tests and blah, blah. I wanted to find what could I really affect the most people. And I think I found it. I think I found it. I mean, I know I found it. Food is medicine. Hydration is medicine.

My life's work is to bring this to the people that can't find it as easily or understand it as easily to the schools of children.

Children are sitting there squirming in their seats and not being able to move. And we're telling them, don't move when they need to move. Movement is hydration. We need to get hydration in them. So that they can think clearer and do better.

I mean, I think it's what all of us are trying to do in this field of integrative medicine is really understand food and nutrition. It's everything. And it's not hard. It's not hard. It doesn't have to be so hard. My big message though is that diet is so done. The word diet, it's done. You're speaking to somebody who worked for Dr. Atkins. That's how I started in this whole crazy field 25 years ago. And so I have put people on ketogenic diets, on carnivore diets, on vegan diets, and everything in between. And what I've learned is that 97% I made that number up doesn't work. It always comes back to what do I need to, how do I eat like a normal, you know, how do I eat normally? How do I eat what's available to me and not gimmicky or not.

How do I say this, you know.

So restrictive. Yeah.

Although even the word itself, take the tea off diet and you've got die. Like that's not something that I'm attracted to try and do. Right. I'm avoiding that thing.

Yeah, yeah. Now there are, I still see chronically ill people. I see people with chronic illnesses and, you know, diabetics and that kind of thing. And there are things, you know, that we have to do to get their cells to a place where they can hopefully learn and eat the way a mass, you know, the way nature intended. Right. So I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, if there are people out there that are, you know, that have type 2 diabetes or something like that, they need to be watching their sugar, you know, and including their fruit sugars. Right. So, so there are still those people. But if you're an athlete and your cells are functioning and you're, you know, you're doing your everything is, is working the way it should be, then you should be eating. You, you probably are already eating a diet that is rich in real whole foods and, and devoid of ultra processed foods, or having the one time, you know, the once in a while splurge of birthday cake at your kid's birthday or something.

And I like what you said earlier around the Pareto's principle of 80, 20 and something about six or seven years ago, I decided was every plate that I looked down at breakfast, lunch, dinner, I just want to ensure that 80% of it is plant based or whole food. And then the other 20% can be more processed. And so I can still have a tortilla wrap, you know, So I try to keep it simple. And I think the Pareto's principle is helpful. It's not a diet by any stretch of the imagination, but it just helps, I think, the balance.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because I wasn't even talking about it in that sense. So there's lots of ways that you can think about that. 80, 20, you know, which I love, you know, so 80% of the time, you are eating really clean and really well. 20% of the time you're not, you know, so however. Which however you want to look at it. But I think that that's actually probably a really good way to look at it. Look at your plate.

This science of movement. Tell me a little bit more.

Yeah. I have to say, once again, we started a trend. I believe we started the trend. It's been coming around. It turns out that fascia is the connective tissue that surrounds every cell, every organ in our body. It's the network of this connective tissue that surrounds everything. It turns out that fascia is a delivery system of hydration to our whole body. So the idea that you have to move your joints to lubricate them, we've always maybe kind of heard and known. Well, now we really understand why, because when you're doing this, you're moving fluid to your periphery. When you're bobbing your head, you're moving fluid up your spinal canal into your brain and back down. When you're twisting, you're twisting it up your spinal canal. So it turns out that.

Fascia and movement acts as a hydraulic pump, which is an interesting thought because we never thought about it that way. We only ever thought that fluid gets moved through the body via blood and lymph and through the capillary system and osmosis. And that's where it ends. Now, this is just a whole nother. It seems logical, but now we have some real research that shows that that's what's happening. And also, fascia works as an electrical system, too. So you're getting electrical impulses, which we only ever thought was like our nervous system, but electrical impulses get water, moves electricity also through our body. It's just a whole other way of thinking about it. Once again, why sitting is the new smoking? We're squelching delivery of fluid to our periphery. We're sitting all day long.

We talk about things called micro movements in the book, which, you know, we made up. They're not. They're simple. You Think about the way this is a micro movement. Anything that you're doing is a micro movement. Twisting, turning, fidgeting. You look at fidgeting studies. People who fidget live longer, you know. So once again, going back to those kids that are fidgeting in school, let them fidget. Let them move. Let them get up and go get a drink of water and come back and sit down. Teach them where the water fountains are in the schools.

So movement is everything. And we are not exercise experts, but this is just simple movement to be done in addition to whatever you're doing for exercise, whether you're a believer of 10,000 steps a day, research showing maybe not. Maybe not even that much, or whatever.

It may be, that's fascinating. And I think it's important because sometimes we think of exertion, physical exertion, as, oh, it's going to deplete me of hydration because I'm sweating. But actually, we don't need to sweat profusely to move. We could be moving, as you say, we could be fidgeting. I was the kid at the back of the class who was drumming and tapping, and I couldn't stop. Right. But you're saying that's good to be moving in a natural way, to get up, to move around, to twist around and get a book from the shelf. Those are good, good natural movements that can help with hydration.

Yeah. And we, you know, you know, we live in such a world where everything is so convenient that we now have. I love this example. We have the backup cameras in our cars, so we no longer have to turn around to back out of our driveway. You know, it's right there. You're just, you know, backing out, looking at the thing, you know, so everything is so convenient that we're not moving the way that we are moving, you know, so we have to. One of the things. So another tip is before you get up in the morning, before your feet even hit the ground, start from your toes and just move every joint in ways from your toes to your head, in ways that you don't normally move them or that you do and move them. So just do a quick thing, do it a few times throughout the day. Twist and turn in your seat, bob up and down your head, do these little micro movements a few times a day and just keep them in the back of your mind and. And push yourself to move them, like really twist and turn and, you know, and do all those things.

That's fascinating. And just before we wrap up, one observation I guess for me is when I look to Eastern philosophy, Eastern lifestyle. Tai Chi comes to mind. Right. And I see a lot of older, elderly, you know, Eastern, whether it's from China or Korea. And they're involved in these movements. They're much more flexible in their older years. They're generally much healthier. So I see that connection between. Because Tai Chi in a lot of ways is very soft, gentle, flowing movements. And what you're suggesting is it's hard. Oh, hell, yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. No, it's fantastic. But, yeah, that contributes to it, I think. I'm going to give you a number here. And I don't think the numbers are exactly correct, but you can get the idea. Children are born with something like 300 different body part movements, and by the time we're 40, we have like 40 different movements that we do, you know, so. So we. We lose those things as we get older. So it is important to. Yeah, I love the idea of Tai Chi, you know, over Covid. I did start a practice of it, and then I dropped it off. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna take this as my inspiration to get back into it.

I love it. Good.

Yeah.

Hey, just one last question for you before we wrap up. So I want us to fast forward many, many years into the future, and you are fully aware that it's your last day here on Earth and somebody very young, so a very, very young person, a child comes up to you and asks, dana, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you ask them or what would you say to them?

Oh, I think.

That'S a great question. The first thing that pops into my head is that. And I wish this was the case for me because it's the one thing that has been a really, really hard for me my whole life, is that.

Exercise must become a part of your life. And if you start young, like formal exercise, I think is so important to teach young people, you know, And I think that. And.

Is that where you're going?

That's amazing.

Yeah.

If that comes from your heart and you feel like that would make such a difference in the quality of their life and a purposeful life, that's amazing.

Yeah. Imagine if we all had exercise as I think it is. That. And then obviously food and nutrition, teaching them nutrition. I say this to my parents all the time. Not my parents, my patients that are parents. I say it to them all the time. Teach them now.

They may stray. I promise you it will always be with them. And when they come back after college or something, I see it all the time, they'll know what they learned and they will come back to those nutrition things that you taught them. So teach them young. But I think the exercise is really a big thing. I don't think we do enough of that, of really teaching it and making it a part of their lives.

I think making it formal sports are probably the easiest way to do it, but not the only way.

That's incredible. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I want to say a massive thank you for actually creating the space to share your wisdom with every listener today.

Oh, so nice to meet you. Thank you.

Absolute pleasure. And when that next book. Yeah, when that next book comes out, we'll get another interview and chat about it because I'm very excited for that. And next time I'm in New York, I'll definitely reach out and vice versa. If you're down this neck of the woods, please do reach out.

I will for sure. For sure.

Awesome. Thanks a million, Dana.

Thank you.

Take care.

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