Eating Smarter for Your Brain with Shawn Stevenson & Jim Kwik

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. Your question for today is a big one. How do you eat smarter? Nobody wants to eat stupid, right? And so we have back with us a very popular guest, somebody who's been on our show numerous times. We're really glad that he's back. Sean Stevenson. He is a nutritionist, bestselling author, number one top health podcast host. Um, we've had you back on this. We had you on the show in the past talking about your book Sleep Smarter, which very popular episodes. Now we're going to talk about your upcoming book called Eat Smarter. Brilliant branding, my friend. Thanks for coming back.

It's my pleasure, man. I love talking with you, Jim.

Dude, I could talk to you for hours. So we know, uh, let's jump into food. We know what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. And let's talk a little bit about brain. You and I were geeking out about brain anatomy before we started recording. What's this thing made out of? Because what you eat becomes you. But what's the brain made out of?

Yeah, this is such a great question. Just an important place to begin because oftentimes I don't think we really realize that our brains are made out of the stuff that we eat. And our brain is actually a very, very hungry organ. As a matter of fact, it only takes up about 2% of our body's overall mass, but it consumes upwards of 25% of the calories we consume. It's a massively hungry organ. And it just makes sense because it's also arguably the most complex entity in the known universe.

Yeah.

And being that it's doing so many different processes, literally like trillions of things are happening Right now in our brains, many of these pathways and the way that we are feeding our brain is actually this part. Once we get in this conversation, it's not as clear-cut as it may seem because being that it's the most complex and powerful entity in the known universe, it's also very protective. All right, our brains are so powerful, but yet they're very delicate and they're actually about the— your brain's consistency is about the consistency of soft butter. So it's like this beautiful poetry in nature, like this super powerful entity is also the most— it's more delicate than my emotions after watching Toy Story 3, you know, like I'm so— It's this beautiful poetry. Now, being that this is the case, it also has a security system, external and internal. The external security system, it's the only organ that's completely enclosed in its own hard shell, its own bone, right? We have our cranium, we have our skull that's protecting this organ. And that's protecting from external intrusions, but internal intrusions are even more potentially problematic because they're subtle. And for this, the brain has what's known as the blood-brain barrier. And it's really this highly sophisticated velvet rope, basically, of what's going to determine what's going to get into your brain and what won't. Because what's circulating in your body, in your bloodstream, there's a lot of toxins, there's a lot of metabolic waste, there are many different substances that can be incredibly detrimental to your brain. And so the brain has developed this very sophisticated system of identifying only specific things that can cross over this blood-brain barrier and make it into the brain. And so it's very, very selective. And our mutual friend, Dr. Lisa Mosconi, she calls it neuronutrition, you know, and so the brain has its own diet. And so what I want folks to know just right off the bat is that there are specific nutrients that are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and directly feed the development of your brain cells. All right. And today we'll talk about what some of those are. And we're not just going to talk about disease prevention as far as the brain and degradation. That's where a lot of the work is focused. We're going to talk about the things you can do, specific foods and nutrients you can eat to make your brain work better.

And smarter. Tangential, when you— when we have— when we talk about our second brain, our gut, And you hear this term leaky gut syndrome. Is there a similar phenomenon here in the brain? The blood-brain barrier, can certain things like leak in because of disease, inflammation?

Ooh, Jim, this is so good. So good. And I'm so honored about Eat Smarter coming out at this time and furthering these conversations because this is gonna be some of the first in book form information getting out to everyday folks to get educated in this topic. You know, there's leaky gut, and we also have this developing term of leaky brain, you know, and actually things that can break down the— this blood-brain barrier, this basically very sophisticated security system can create a situation where it's breaking down and allowing things into the brain that shouldn't be there. And also having degradation and the ability for toxins and metabolic waste, because I just mentioned the brain is doing trillions of things. There's a lot of metabolic waste products that need to get shuttled out of the brain, and that process being broken down as well and not working as effectively. And this buildup of this, you know, like amyloid beta plaque, for example, and not being able to get it out of the brain. We talked about this in Sleep Smarter.

Right.

And how sleep deprivation is one of the biggest factors behind an inability of the brain to clean itself. Because it's when you're sleeping that your— this lymphatic system, this cleaning process, your brain's little internal helpers, it's about 10 times more active. So what you just brought up is a very important factor in this. And this goes into— it leads into a conversation because this topic in and of itself can be a whole show. But it leads into an important topic and a subject this term that a lot of folks are going to hear more about coming up. And so this might be the first time you're hearing it. But there's this new phenomenon called neuroinflammation. It's not that it's new, it's just that now we have a term for it, and hypothalamic inflammation specifically.

Hmm.

Hypothalamic inflammation. So the hypothalamus is really largely regarded as the master regulator of your endocrine system. All right, it's like the, the governor. It's like the one that's running what's happening downstream. Now, this is part of the HPA axis, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. But along that axis, the superhighway, is also your thyroid, for example. It's also factoring in, you know, what's happening with your immune system and your thymus gland. There's so much going on in this axis. Now, here's the big issue. And this is one of the things that we talked about that's probably— again, it's for a lot of folks, this first time they're going to be hearing it. Because when you're hearing about losing weight, we're generally focused on this kind of calorie paradigm and not understanding that your hypothalamus is regulating how your body is using or not using energy in your body. And the latest data that we have shows that hypothalamic inflammation can directly lead to leptin resistance. So that's Leptin is your body's satiety hormone, or your major satiety hormone. We talk about all the rest of them in the book too, but that leptin processing starts to go down. And so we find folks start to become increasingly more ravenous in their appetite and cravings. And they also found that this hypothalamic inflammation directly leads to weight gain. And nobody's talking about that with their diet programs. that we need to address the inflammation in your brain to lose weight. But your brain, and this is a very simple principle, it's controlling what everything in your body is doing. And this is the beauty of it. If we can get our brains healthy, we can get our bodies healthy.

And we've talked about this before, that as your waistline increases, your brain actually can shrink. And so that's why that weight management is so important as well. So let's talk about this. We have skyrocketing rates of brain inflammation. So that's really affecting our health. And so you alluded to like foods maybe we should be avoiding that could contribute to it. And then the foods and the nutrients that would help build our brain so we could be smarter, better. What are, what are some of those things?

Absolutely. So the first thing for folks to be aware of is that we talked about the blood-brain barrier And basically having these little pathways that only allow certain types of cars to drive through them. Your brain has a lot of sugar pathways, a lot of sugar tunnels. Your brain has a preferential kind of treatment. It loves and will absorb the vast majority of glucose calories that are in your body. We're talking upwards of 50% to 80% of the glucose that comes in, brain is going to snatch it up. It loves it. But not because it's this evolutionary drive to do it. It's just that this is what we're kind of hardwired to do. But that evolutionary drive can become faulty because of the pure access of sugar that we have today that we'd never had throughout human evolution. And so these sugar pathways that are just driving all the glucose we might be taking in, all of these sugar calories, and I shared a recent study that upwards of about— the average American is consuming over 100 pounds of added sugar every year.

That's mind-blowing.

That's added sugar. That's not even the naturally occurring sugar in so many different foodstuffs. And so it's really shocking, but at the same time, we don't realize that our brain is taking the brunt of it. And so these sugar pathways that are allowing rapid amounts of sugar to make it into the brain are one of the factors behind this growing epidemic of neuroinflammation. And one of the things that we see is that the brain's receptors, sugar receptors, receptors for insulin, because the brain also has this insulin production that's needed to drive the sugar into the cells, but we start to see insulin resistance happening in the brain. All right. And this insulin resistance in the brain is now being referred to as type 3 diabetes. It's one of the kind of subsets of what we refer to as Alzheimer's disease. So Alzheimer's is often being referred to now as type 3 diabetes. So this insulin resistance in the brain. And so we've got all of this kind of rampant sugar floating around in our system, creating inflammation. Alright, so that's one of the big causative factors behind the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier and also the inflammation in the brain. is our ever-increasing consumption of sugar. So now let me be clear, this does not mean that all sugar is bad, that you can't have sugar. It's just being aware that this isn't just about weight loss, you know, because we tend to think of sugar in these very vanity terms. It's literally destroying the most important organ in our lives that determines everything about you. And so that's really what I wanted to accomplish with this book is to give people a layered understanding of of how much food matters and not just this one vanity metric. And so, but the good news is we can fix these things.

With regards to sugar, does it matter, the source then? If you're getting it from honey or maple syrup, does the source matter?

That's such a good question. And this gets into the conversation that I'll just briefly touch on, which is about our metabolic uniqueness, our metabolic fingerprint is unique to us. Our cascade of microbiome, you know, our microbiome and our endocrine system, our neurotransmitters, the cascade that we have has never existed before in human history for us as an individual and will never exist after us. Even our cascade of all these different metrics is going to be different tomorrow than what it is today. The body is this constantly dynamic changing entity. And so when we're focused on like what type of sugar, it depends on us.

Correct.

It depends on us. And I cite one of the studies in the book and I show this study is nuts. It has folks to consume either a banana or a cookie to see the impact that it has on their metabolism. And you would suspect like, okay, the cookie is definitely going to be more detrimental to the blood glucose, you know, just right off the bat, like the banana has a little bit of fiber, it has some micronutrients, like— Wasn't the case for everybody. Some folks had a banana and it flipped their system out. And the cookie did nothing to their, to their metabolism. It did nothing to their blood sugar. It stayed normal as if they never had a cookie. All right. It depends on our unique metabolism, what type of sugar is going to be most detrimental or even potentially helpful.

And can you test that? Can you test that with like a glucose monitor or—

Yep, yep. So we've got all these self-quantification devices that can tell us this feedback. For me personally, I'm always referring people back to paying attention to what's happening inside of their inner world. And this is something that we talked about, like This could— any of us can get detracted from it, especially when we're like focused on big project or family stuff or social media. All this stuff takes us out of our own bodies. But if you just pay attention to how you feel when you have a certain food, how do you look when you are eating a certain way? How do you perform? How does— how's your performance affected?

Yeah.

And all this can give us valuable data. You don't need to get a glucose monitor, but it can be helpful if you love that self-quantification information. And you might find out some really interesting things about how different foods affect your body.

Yeah, Sean, we have— you'd appreciate this because you have kids. We do a live kids program every Tuesday and Thursday from kids 9 to 13, 14 to 18. And as part of it, because we don't want what's going on with school to get in the way of their education. Right. And part of it is I was citing some of your work and, and I was actually having them journal and talk about all the foods that passed through their lips and then how they feel afterwards so that they could— they don't, you know, and not having a monitor, they could actually write down and go and connect with their intuition and see how they feel. And they can see the association, you know, or the correlation between what they're eating and that cause and effect. But that's huge. That self-awareness is really a superpower. So which foods and nutrients are clinically proven to be good for the brain, for memory, for For focus, for the things that a lot of our listeners really want to enhance and optimize.

Perfect. Well, this will circle back first and foremost to the beginning of our conversation, like what is our brain actually made of? So we mentioned that it's made of the food that we eat, but more so it's made of the water that we drink. You know, your brain is upwards of about 80% water. And so if folks don't get that, as Jim and I Take a sip. If folks really don't get that today, then we're missing— we're really missing the point.

Yeah.

The number one nutrient needed for optimal brain function is water. Now, this is an entire conversation in and of itself because we can get into conversation about what type of water. And you might be like, I thought water's just water, H2O, just wet stuff. But the truth is, H2O. This is what I was taught in school, my typical university setting. It's H2O. But H2O doesn't exist anywhere in nature by itself. There's no pure H2O anywhere in nature. H2O is— water is known as the universal solvent. And so it's constantly interacting with the minerals and the other components in our environment, and it really integrates itself with it. Like Bruce Lee, be water. Water becomes whatever it interacts with, this universal solvent. So water literally becomes you. It integrates with you and becomes you. It has this remarkable intelligence. And so we want water that has structure, that has the minerals that we need, but not too many because we know that seawater, Ocean water, drinking that can literally kill you. And that has to do with this process of, of osmosis and like how water is moving from your extracellular fluid to your cells and all this stuff. We go through that in the book. But the bottom line is high-quality spring water generally is going to have an optimal ratio of minerals. If you're not— I'm going to share this really, really quickly because this is important. If you don't have a water filter on your tap water, then you become the filter. And I cited a study, and this was looking at about 41 million homes of Americans across the country, from Southern California to northern New Jersey, and testing their tap water. And they found traces of a plethora, dozens of pharmaceutical chemicals, pesticides, Everything from antidepressants to chemotherapy medications, traces of all these drugs, these metabolic waste products in our water supply coming out of our faucet. And unfortunately, a lot of folks still don't know this. And the question is, why? How is that possible? Well, again, we're putting a lot of things into our environment that we never have before in human history. And just part of the cycle of dumping those things into our rivers and oceans That stuff, you know, it's the— this hydrological cycle, it's finding its way back into our water supply. And there's also programs for water that's going from toilet to tap. All right, not to freak people out, but it happens, you know, it's one of the solutions that's being looked at. And so we covered that as well, you know, so for the most part, just getting a simple, you know, reverse osmosis system, but then you need to add some structure back to that water because again, you don't want to just drink pure H2O.

And is that through like lemons or salts or—

Perfect. Yep. Trace— you can do trace mineral drops, high-quality salts, even, you know, like you just mentioned, lemons, mint. These provide electrons and minerals to the water and structure. It gives it this energy. And so we cover all of those things in the book too, because this can be another whole conversation. So I just wanted to point that out. Hydration is the number one thing. And I also shared a study on how we are mostly water.

Our brains are mostly made out of water. And you have to know that the current environment, you know, it affects our internal environment as well. And people don't realize where they could lose water, even something simple like sleeping through respiration and perspiration. So definitely stay, stay hydrated. Helps your focus, your cognitive performance. Certainly your memory, reaction time, thinking speed. So now that people have prioritized water again, it's a good reminder as I take another sip.

What else?

What else is next on the list in terms of nutrients or foods?

Perfect. So going back to what can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and make it into the brain. So water being 80% of the brain. But what about the dry weight of the human brain? You know, what is the rest of the brain really made of? And for that, we get into a conversation. A lot of people hear that, you know, your brain is mostly fat, or your brain is mostly fat. It's actually mostly water, but of the dry weight, it's about 11% fat.

Hmm.

But that— it's actually not that much more fat than it is protein. It's about 8% protein if we're talking about the dry weight, 3% minerals. We get— again, the minerals are very important. with so many different functions in the body, and just a sprinkling of like, you know, carbs and other compounds. And so being that it has— that it's primarily fat, fats are obviously important. But I want people to know that not all fats can cross over into your brain.

Hmm.

Saturated fats have been really villainized in the media. It just kind of goes up and down, back and forth. But a large portion of the human brain is saturated fat. But primarily it's from saturated fats consumed in infancy. Alright, so mother's milk can be upwards of 50% saturated fat. So when you're a child in Britain, the initial development of your brain, saturated fats are immensely important. But those receptors or those, you know, the ability of saturated fats to cross the blood-brain barrier dramatically goes down once we reach adulthood. It's like almost none. And your brain— but your brain can make its own saturated fat in and of itself. The fat that is most important that we all need to be consuming, and now we've got really sound data on this, you might hear it, but now we're going to really drill in, is omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA. And this isn't just like it sounds good anymore. I'm talking about these essential fatty acids have the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and directly nourish your brain cells. And one of the studies that I mentioned in the book, this was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that increasing your dietary levels of DHA specifically was able to directly improve both memory and reaction time in test subjects.

Hmm.

All right, directly improves your memory. And some of the best sources of omega-3 DHA and EPA are going to be from fish. And I wanted to like directly look at this— is fish going to be more effective than, you know, other sources and different supplements? And so there was one really interesting study, and what they did was they found that folks who have one seafood meal per week did in fact perform better on cognitive skills tests than folks who had less than one Seafood meal per week, just one seafood meal per week. Now, this is for some folks, you know, taking a vegan and vegetarian protocol, there are ways around this as well. Or if you just don't like fish and you like— even watching Aquaman just makes you dry heave in your mouth, you can't just deal with the seafood.

It's okay.

But just know that this is the most viable source as far as a direct whole food source. Because DHA and EPA are not found in plant sources.

Okay.

All right. There is algae though. Algae sources do contain these, but they need to be very concentrated. And so folks might hear omega-3s and they think chia seeds, flaxseeds, hemp seeds. These are great sources, but these are ALA. And your body can convert some of that to EPA and DHA, but about 75% at least gets lost in the conversion process. So to get the amount of DHA that you need, you're going to have to consume, technically speaking, a buttload of chia seeds, all right, every day. And it just— it's not the most viable option. So whole food fish sources, fish oil, if it's like The, you know, source properly. And I highly recommend if you're vegan or vegetarian, get yourself a high-quality algae oil so that you can get your omega-3 DHA and EPA. Your brain literally is starving for it.

Algae oil? What kind of algae oil is that?

So this is such a diverse array and diverse conversation. I want to preface by saying Krill oil, depending on your ethics, that might be an even better source because it's a little bit closer, is a little bit more studied right now.

All—

not all, but 99.5% of the studies on omega-3s from supplemental form are done on fish oil. That's where the data is coming from. Not to say that algae oil isn't effective, but we don't have that much data on it. We do know that the omegas are there. And so when people think of algaes, they can think of things like spirulina, chlorella, and these have remarkable— oh, spirulina has been found to have— to be protective and to help to reduce neuroinflammation in the brain.

What?

You know, so you get these like double benefits. You know, it has another essential fatty acid, GLA, that's found in a rare kind of plant source in spirulina.

So for you, do you supplement with like chlorella and spirulina, or do you have it in your green drink? Some— do you take it— is that something you do in the first thing in the morning? Or—

yeah, for years, man. It's been almost about 19 years now, like I've been tinkering with these different algaes, you know, AFA, spirulina, chlorella. Generally at this point, I might have it know, 1 or 2 times a week. Yeah, throw it into, you know, even guacamole, like put a little spirulina in there. It might look like super, you know, Star Wars green, you know, but at the same time, it tastes— actually tastes really good. But you can, you know, mix it in with smoothies and juice and things like that. But I'm a big proponent of things tasting good. So you've got to do it in a way that it feels good. And I can't let everybody go without saying this, that There was another study, and this was published in the journal Neurology, and they actually did MRIs and looked at what happened in folks that were deficient in DHA and EPA. And we— when we talked earlier about brain shrinkage, this was one of the biggest factors of brain shrinkage was lack of DHA and EPA in the diet. So this is not the kind of shrinkage that happens when it's cold outside.

Yeah.

This is like the shrinkage that happens like that can permanently mess up your brain and your life, because your brain is regulating so much. And so the, the target is about 3 grams per day of, you know, fish oil or a combination of like whole food sources, algae oil. But that's the minimum that you want to hit is 3 grams.

Are there good sources? Which fish are high in those high-quality fats?

So this would be cold water fatty fish. You know, a lot of folks know salmon, sardines, mackerel. There's so many different options. And that's another thing too, is like having a diverse array. And I also shared in the book several studies with lean fish as well, having some benefit with the brain and metabolism. So it isn't just the fatty fish, but fatty fish do have the lion's share of benefits for the brain.

Astonishing. So we have, we have water, we have fish. What do you have a third one like in terms of your— I know you go way more in detail in the book. Did you have a third favorite you would add to the mix?

Absolutely. So as we mentioned before, that The brain and the minerals play such a big part. And really, I want to put it in a category when we say electrolytes. All right, electro, electricity, right? The brain is running on this remarkable type of electricity and this energy. And so electrolytes are incredibly important, and specifically magnesium. Magnesium is critical. It is so important for brain function, and unfortunately It's the number one mineral deficiency in our country today, with at least 56% of the US population being chronically deficient in magnesium. And here's a double-blind placebo-controlled study, and this was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, found that improving magnesium levels in adult test subjects— these are folks between the age of 50 and 70— could potentially reverse brain aging. by over 9 years, literally making your brain younger by getting your magnesium levels up. And this is one of those things where we see— and this was done in a journal specializing in Alzheimer's disease, because these are conditions that largely considered to be one-directional, like it's just getting worse. You can try to slow it down, but it can't get better. And now they're finding there are things we can do to improve our cognitive function when we start to see decline. And one of those things is magnesium. So I'm a big proponent of food first because it has the cofactors and, and, you know, additional nutrients that come along with it that make it work better in your body. Great sources of magnesium are going to be anything that's green is going to be a great source of magnesium. The power play here, like spirulina, for example, but green leafy vegetables are going to be a great source. And so There's, there's so many different things, so many different foods. Magnesium supplementation might be something to look towards too, but you need to be careful about that. There are many different forms of magnesium. I mean, everything from magnesium citrate that's popular in supplements to sulfates and things we have in common like Epsom salts.

Yeah.

That's magnesium. You know, it's known to help with like muscle relaxation and things like that. So there's a wide spectrum. And what, for myself personally, one of the things I do almost every night is I put it on a topical magnesium that's absorbed through the skin, you know, supercritical extract. And your skin absorbs nutrients too. You absorb water from when you take a shower, you know, so your skin is hungry and absorbing nutrients. But food first, dense sources of magnesium-rich foods. And if you can power play that, then with sources of like DHA and EPA, it's even better.

Astonishing. Shawn Stevenson, I could talk to you for hours and hours, but luckily I have a copy of your book and I highly recommend everyone preorder this book. It's called Eat Smarter. And this is really cutting-edge information on how food controls your metabolism, your memory, your sleep, and so much more. And, you know, obviously in the show notes, we'll put links to your previous episodes, we'll put links to the book. It's at jimkwik.com/notes. Shawn, how can people find out more and stay in touch with you?

Awesome, man. Thank you so much, Jim. For the book, we actually put together a 10-video mini-course for free that you get when you preorder the book. So this is 10 foods that are clinically proven To optimize your fat-related or fat-burning hormones. And so there's no food that's a magic bullet, but these have the most efficacy and clinical data showing that these help to optimize what our hormones are doing. And so people get that free as soon as they preorder the book. That's at eatsmarterbook.com where they can preorder today and get access to that. And of course, Eat Smarter will be on its way to you as well. And again, Jim, I love you, man, and thank you so much for just being a continued inspiration in my life. And I couldn't do this subject matter without, you know, having a friend like you to keep me inspired. And I'm just excited about the future. You know, we've got a lot going on in the world, but there's so much opportunity for positive change, and you're a big leader in that. So I just want to thank you, man.

Thank you, buddy. I mean, a big part of those choices that we're making are the choices that we make at the grocery store, you know, or the choices that we make in the kitchen or that we use, you know, our hands in terms of what we feed our mouths with our forks. And so those are little things, and little, little by little, a little can become a whole lot. I recommend everyone actually screenshot this episode and tag us on social media. Tag Shawn, tag myself, and share one thing that you're— share your favorite brain food. I would, I would love to see that, and I'll repost some of my favorites. And then go over and pre-order Sean's book. It's, it's kind of a no-brainer, I'll just say that without a doubt. Sean, buddy, thanks for being back on the show, and congratulations again on the book.

Thank you.

I have a question for you, Sean. Um, this maybe we could even just use for social media. Do you have the other minute?

Oh yeah.

So, um, every— you know, everyone talks about what to eat, And for me, my model, whenever I'm kind of looking at something, I like to look at it, you know, ask these questions. It's not just what you eat, it's how you eat. A lot of people aren't chewing. You know, a lot of people, it's where you eat. Some people are watching in the living room or watching television, right? Or they're on their devices. And so they're not getting that kind of rest and digest. It's where you're eating. It's why you're eating. Some people are just eating for, you know, emotional needs as opposed to for energy and nutrition, you know, but also it's when you eat also, right? And so does that play a role in for you and your family, like when you're actually eating these foods that we talked about in the show? Absolutely.

You know, all of these factors come into play, you know, and even who you're eating with has a major role on what's happening with our, with our body and our food choices. And what's so fascinating, Harvard researchers recently did a study and found that folks who eat together as a family at least 3 times per week— this could be breakfast, lunch, or dinner— tend to make better food choices and eat less processed food and have more intake of nutrients that are critical to the development and support of our brains simply by eating together more often. Now, that's one aspect, but the when aspect is shocking in the impact that that can have. Because we developed as humans, we really evolved. We didn't have 24-hour access to food like we have today.

Mm-hmm.

And so we would go through processes of eating and having time where we're not eating. And when we're not eating, this elicits the impact of several powerful hormones that help to keep your body regenerating, and also fit. For example, when we're not eating, we allow insulin to stop doing its job. Insulin is amazing. Insulin has been given a lot of bad press because it is a major kind of fat-storing/energy-storing hormone, but we could not survive without it. But we want the action of insulin's twin brother. They're not identical twins though. All right. insulin's twin brother, glucagon, which does the opposite. Glucagon opens the cell to use that stored energy for our metabolic processes and our functioning. But glucagon doesn't get to do its job unless insulin sits down somewhere and stops doing that job. And the only way that that really happens is when we stop consuming all the time. And so that's one aspect from the metabolic side. is giving glucagon an opportunity to do its job of using stored body fat. And so on top of that, when we have a period when we're not eating, you know, so when we're talking about the when, we'll just say, and what the data shows is simply having at least an 11-hour window of when you're not eating. This includes your sleep time. So you could stop eating, you know, be done with dinner at 8 PM, and then have your first meal the next day at 7:00 AM after a good night of sleep. And you're going to get so much benefit for your metabolism and your hormones. And another one of those hormones is human growth hormone, right? HGH is radically increased, the production and mobilization, utilization of HGH when we have a period that we're not eating. All right? Fasting increases the production. And so that's another benefit. And lastly, one of the most powerful benefits is autophagy, right? So your body's kind of metabolic waste management system, specifically in talking with Jim Kwik, specifically with the human brain and helping your body to get and to keep your brain clean. We need times where we're not constantly adding in more things for your brain to try to process, if that makes sense. So Easing up and putting the brakes on a little bit more often, giving your body a little bit of a window of fasting, which can include the overnight sleep, you give your brain and your body significant increases in its metabolic performance and also your cognitive performance as well.

What's the, what's the frequency then if you're going to intermittent fast or you're going to do full-on fasts for multiple days? Is there a— what's the science or what do you practice? There's—

I've got a full disclosure. I cannot talk about any of this with good ethics if I didn't do it myself. And so I've done some of the most insane experiments, you know, various types of fasting for years, you know, 21-day fasts, you know, just having juice Or, you know, water fasting, days at a time of like micronutrient fasting where I'm just like bringing in some micronutrient resources and, and nothing else, intermittent fasting. And the cool thing is, and I go through this also in my, in my new book, Eat Smarter, that you get a lot of the same benefits from doing different types of fasting, you know, so it doesn't have to be one flavor of it. But the most in alignment with humans today and what our ancestors were doing is intermittent fasting. This daily fasting, having these small breaks from eating, have incredible benefits that can mirror a lot of things that happen with longer-term fasting. There's so many different forms of fasting, so let's make that clear. But for myself personally, what I found to be the most advantageous Because now the big conversation today in the final frontier, what it's looking like, is the health of the microbiome. And so having these long times of fasting and like maybe you're just having juice cleanses and different things like that, they can be absolutely miraculous for healing, for so many different aspects of health. But we have to be mindful of feeding our healthy bacteria the food that they want so they stick around. And this is not talked about enough. Because all of that experimentation caused some dysbiosis for me after all of that stuff. Because your gut microbiome, your gut bacteria and viruses, fungi, all this cascade, they're only going to stick around if they have the food they want to eat. You know, just like any of us. When I came to Jim's house for a party and, you know, he's got the Iron Man up, he's got, you know, it's like a good vibe happening, people having a good time.

Yeah.

But if there's no food, I gotta go, Jim. I gotta go eat, you know. So we've seen today the Western microbiome has about 4 times less diversity of someone who's eating more of an indigenous kind of hunter-gatherer diet. We have so many species of bacteria in our guts that are either endangered or extinct because we're not feeding them the stuff that they need. And so that leans itself towards having, doing the intermittent fasting so we can continue to provide the prebiotics for your probiotics to stick around and proliferate and also get some of the fasting benefits. So that's what I've been doing personally for, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 years now. I've been just doing— and when I say this, trust and believe, again, this does not mean it has to be something so stringent and ridiculous. Like if I want to have an early breakfast, if we got something going on, It's cool.

Yeah.

For the most part, you know, and you don't have to turn your life upside down. It's just having a little bit more intentionality. Like I said, going to bed, finishing your last meal at 8 PM, and then having your first thing 8 AM the next day, that's not a big deal. It's not a big change for most people, you know what I mean? So, and also throw this in there, there are fast-mimicking nutrients that you can actually have in that window that can improve the, the effects of the intermittent fasting. Alright, so there's so much wonderful, you know, nuance and dynamics to this conversation. But I think everybody can benefit from a little bit of strategic intermittent fasting.

I love that. So it's not just what you eat, but it's also how you eat, because some people are so stressed over their diets, you could actually bring— which can negate And the benefits that come from it, but you can bring joy to it. And it's also when you eat. So, you know, when you eat matters, especially for your gray matter also as well. Shawn Stevenson, his book, eatsmarterbook.com. Preorder it and make sure you get your copy and your, your 10-day video course. Congratulations again, my friend.

Thank you, Jim.

Hi, Kwik Brain.

It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number one, make sure you share this because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing: if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question. And I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.