Charles Poliquin: Why You Can’t Just Rely on Calories for Weight Loss (What They Don’t Tell You)

What I'm going to do in the future because of what we're doing with Artists for Addicts and the Platform with addiction. Charles can speak to a variety of different subjects on health and exercise and fitness and supplementation, but he also knows a ton about the brain and about human behavior. And so I want to do a whole episode with you in the future when we launch the Platform to help people with addictions about. Because, like, for instance, the supplements. If someone has an alcohol problem and they want their body to kind of reject alcohol, what is it? The best two are the combination of two amino acids, which is thyrosine and D L phenylalanine. And if you take 3 grams of each on an empty stomach in the morning, people will find that they don't find alcohol tasty anymore, so they naturally take it out of their regimen. You will find that pretty much anything that has to do with the brain is fixable with a certain combination of the omega 3s and certain amino acids. Because with fish oil, if the fish is big and comes from a warm water, it tends to contain more EPA. And of the omega 3s, EPA down regulates inflammation. So if you have arthritis, high blood pressure and so on, you want to use a fish oil with a lot of epa. But if you have attention deficit disorder or bipolar disorder, there's at least 16 brain disorders that we know are manageable with the right type of fish oil. But that fish oil has to have an ID DHA content. And where do you get a high DHA content in the fish oil? They're telling to be small fish in very cold water, like sardines and herrings and so on. But when you go to the store, if you go see your doctor or your nutritionist, you can look at the ratio between EPA and DHA and that will decide actually which tissues are affected with it. If you don't have anything particular with your health, I would say every time you go through a bottle of fish oil, pick another brand with a different ratio, and that will lower the odds that you have any sort of disorder. One thing you should know about omega 3s is that there's not a single disease known to man. And I've known this since 1994. That is not helped by Omega 3s. So if you don't believe me, you could go to PubMed, which is the biggest library of scientific papers, and put in any weird disease you, you know, put Omega 3 as a second keyword, and you will find at least one study, if not minimum 14, that show that that Fish oil is beneficial for any ailment known to man. Is there any way to know if fish oil is good? I've heard that a lot of the fish oil you buy in stores is rancid and you should just never eat it. It's actually worse than not eating it. I used to do it until I heard that. And, you know, you hear so much bullshit advice. Worst advice is, you know, bad advice is the worst thing you can take. So how do you know whether fish oil is good or bad? The best way to find out is available through a health practitioner only. So basically, it means that you can't buy on the Internet. The only company there's an exception to the rule. And I don't get paid by this company. It's called Nordic Naturals. Okay. They have very high quality. They really standardize the way they make fish oil. But in Canada, the rules are very different. So in Canada, you can actually buy a store bought fish oil, and probably the best company to buy is called ATP Labs. But they make a fish oil that already has carnitine in it. It's called Omega Carn, and I think that's the best product for your brain. One thing we know from research is that any brain disorder is actually an electrical problem in your brain. And research backs up. The combination of carnitines and. And omega 3s is probably the best healing agent for any brain disorder, ranging from dyspraxia to dyslexia. And you're saying 6 grams per day, that would be a minimum. I mean, it depends on your percentage of body fat. Right. So higher body fats have used as much as 45 grams, but that means your body fat is 45%. As you get leaner, you will use less and less fish oil. Okay, so it's relative if you got 10%, do 10. Yeah, typically when you start off, but it could be at 10%. You've been on fish oil for six months. If I measure your fatty acids in your blood, it may be down to 3 grams. But usually one of the guys I was recommending 30 or 45 grams for at least two decades. And then I remember Mark Houston is probably one of the best vascular health specialists in the world. That's three to eight times more what the literature recommends. But the problem literature never tried high dosages. And one of the best compliments I ever had is that in 2008 there was a KN study that showed that in the average person, 60 grams of fish oil was the best dose. Okay, so he sent me an email that Says if you use liquid, it's not so bad. But the thing, the interesting point that Mark put in his email is clinicians always had of the research, but when we were cavemen or cave women, we consumed 3 to 400 grams of omega 3s a week. But where did they come from? Came from animal brains. Because if you're in South Africa, in the middle of the savannah, you're not going to have access to a lot of fish. So what would happen is that the caveman would wait for the lion, lions would eat the entrails of the antelope and leave the rest alone. So what the caveman would do is, is he would split the skull of the antelope and eat the brain. And 60% of the brain is actually omega 3s and 80% of that is DHA. So that's why what you find in research is that where humans, early humans consumed the most Omega 3s, the faster their brains developed. There's a strong correlation between omega 3 content in a native diet and IQs. For example, the bow and arrow concept was developed where there was more better developed brains. The adrenal reset diet. What does that even mean? What does adrenal mean? What is that? Because I don't think the average person understands that. Yeah, our body has little glands that control whether we're burning or storing, quite simply. And a lot of our strategies to make us lose weight are strategies that make us more apt to store weight. So I talk about how you can go out from storing and towards burning. And so it's a big global catastrophe that we're facing. Yeah. Okay, so I've got a whole list of questions here that I'd like. I mean, we could talk for a week, but. So the rates of obesity are growing, like, dramatically. What are some of the latest projections of kind of where we're at? You know, it's pretty terrifying stuff. One stat that I read recently showed that in the next little over a decade, we're looking at 2/3, 67% of people on the globe being overweight, obese, or morbidly obese. So globally, the numbers of deaths we're projecting. So go Back to like, 1800. All the wars all around the world since 1800. So World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea in. And not just our wars, but all the others. So all those casualties together, we're talking about more than that in the coming decade from complications of obesity. And we're talking about roughly 10 times the cost of all those wars since 1800. Why that's it so the old model is people are lazy and they eat too much. That's what we're being taught and told. And it's so disconnected from reality to see the rates go up stratospherically in the course of a decade. So one thing we see is that animals, so chimps, when their food is controlled, they're getting obese even on controlled diets. So it's not behavior and lifestyle. There's a collective number of factors that push us into the storage state. And our body is getting geared up for famine. We have these mechanisms that allowed us to survive famine in the past, and now a whole lot of things push those buttons and we're storing all of our food as fat. Yeah, and you get right into it immediately. In the beginning of your book where you talk about stress, you talk about toxins, you talk about all of these other factors that I never really quite considered had that much of an impact on people's weight. I have a friend, I won't name his name, where he. And I've known him for probably 15 years. And without changing his diet, when this guy would go through a breakup of a relationship or go through stressful situations, he. He would literally just gain weight and whenever things would. And he's like kind of a roller coaster sort of lifestyle, you know, I mean, he would have lots of ups and downs and it was amazing. And I'm not talking just like 5 or 10 pounds. I mean, he would literally fluctuate 30, 40 pounds. And then things, you know, he would start meditating and he would like lose £20 and he would swear that he wasn't. He could not figure it out. But then he identified a few years ago that it was totally based on stress level. And so now one of his maintenance things is keeping himself not freaking, getting completely stressed out or, you know, because if you're not sleeping, all these sort of things. So, you know, way back when, stress meant danger and danger meant predators, and predators would go after us when they had fewer food options. So that meant food scarcity. So stress equals famine to our bodies. And famine means we prepare, we hold onto it. So his body was not under physical danger, but the mental emotional stress, which can be part of that for sure, that triggered the same thing that danger would. And his body went into a storage mode because of it. And I'm not even sure where I first read this, but it's like people would make the analogy, well, you know, we're so much safer and we got all these luxuries that we never had before. The difference though is it's just non stop, the interconnectivity. Whereas if you're chased by a lion hundreds of years ago, when you're done, if you survive, you're bored for a while, you're safe. Right, exactly. Whereas in modern society, if you have anxiety going on, it could just be constant from the moment you wake up to your inability to sleep and all these sort of things. So let me, without going too deep into that, how much did Genesis control our body weight? And what is a gene? I mean, I'm going to ask you some very basic sort of things because I want people to, you know, you hear about all these things, but like, what does it actually mean? You know, you know, many who have struggled have been told that it's genetic, that their weight is genetic. Genes to our body are what a blueprint is to a building. So a gene is a set of instructions that tells us how we're going to grow. So you see a set of identical twins and they share the same genes. They've got the same, same eye color and a lot of the same health habits. They've been studied. So if twins are raised separately, their body weight has no relationship whatsoever. There's like no correlation. And they've shown that the difference in weight from one twin to another is predictable based upon the adrenal hormones. So the more one twin has adrenal hormone stress, the more that twin will gain weight. So we're often told that weight gain is genetic and it is true that there is susceptibility among certain family members we see. But now we know it's not because of the genes. And the positive side of that is that means it's not inevitable that it can change and it can improve. Okay, so if I see some people, like, let's have, I have a lot of female friends and some like just don't eat very. And I know skinny fat. I mean, so there's, there's some people that are not healthy, but they look good, and there's others that just exercise and work out and they still have trouble losing weight. And so the best of my layman's understanding is, oh, it's genetics. This person just has sort of this thing and this person does not. To what degree are some people just born a certain way where they can eat whatever they want and they maintain a certain level of thinness and other people do not. What is that all about? Well, they're a vanishing species. Current stats tell us that you brought up skinny fat, which is a good concept. There Are those to where their scale weight may be good, but they do not have enough muscle tissue. So they're okay weight but just not lean enough, not enough lean mass. So if you take them out and you take out those who are overweight or obese, the remaining percent of the population is about 11%. So about 11% of the people right now have good body composition. So there's not many and they are dwindling very rapidly. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Okay, so now one of the things you talk about is how do you, why do you argue that calories do not explain weight gain? Because it's, there's been this for years. Calories in, calories out. Explain what is a calorie and then how does that relate to weight gain or weight loss or whatever? It makes me nuts. And that is one of the biggest public policy statements is that it's just eat this, not that, move more, change the calorie equation. A calorie is a unit of fuel. You've got a gallon of gas as a unit of fuel. So a calorie is how much metabolic energy food would release if you burned it in test tube. Now, they've argued at the level of public health that weight gain is from people consuming more calories. And then the solution based on that is eat fewer calories. And I think about that. Well, let's go to football. So I'm not a big sports expert. I'll put that out there. Same with. Okay, good. So I don't have to be embarrassed. So let's say that we're doing a post game analysis and you know, the Cowboys just crushed it. They won the Super Bowl. And someone wants to know from the big commentator, well, why did the Cowboys win? Oh, here we go. The Cowboys won the game because they scored 30 more points than their opponents. Like, well, duh, you know, that's. So there's a description, but that's not an explanation. And that wouldn't be a strategy. You couldn't say, hey guys, next year let's score more points. We could win that way. So at best, that's all the calorie model is. It's just describing events. But with doesn't Explain it doesn't explain it at all. And not only that, but it doesn't work. So can you explain it? Sure. It's the storage response. The body goes into a storage mode. And you mentioned about the very real, powerful mental, emotional stress, and that's big. But a lot of the other factors that are invisible do the same thing. So we could breathe in. We could breathe in plastic residues. And the same thing like your friend when he would go through a breakup or a crisis and how his health would change from that. The same stuff can happen to you from breathing in by products from plastic. The same things that would happen under a crisis. Or you can spend more time around electromagnetic fields. You know, we're carrying our devices all the time. That's just like the breakup and the crisis. Or we can have the fact that a third more people than ever before do shift work. They're not sleeping at regular times. That's just like the stress. That's just like the crisis. Did you say a third more actually do that? Starting in 1980, went up by about a third. Really? In the U.S. or is this worldwide? Globally. Wow. You know, the global economy. We're working on each other's schedules. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Because, I mean, sleep. Well, let's talk about something like sleep. I mean, I'll throw that in here. I guess I can zig and zag here a little bit. But, like, how much does sleep affect? That's a factor. And somewhere around 1980, 1990, things shifted that caused radical weight gain. And we've seen that sleep can be a stronger predictor of weight than diet or exercise can. So the old model of it being behavior, habit, calories, sleep, doesn't make sense on that. If you sleep more, you're actually burning fewer calories. But the data's strong that good, deep sleep rhythms are helpful, and they help because they reset the adrenal response and move us out of that storage state. Yeah. Okay, so one of the questions I have here is that experts say that weight gain is a result of poor habits. How does habits relate to this? Because I'm of the mindset that much of any sort of indulgence is addiction, and the brain gets hijacked. And. And I know a lot about behavioral addictions. Sex addiction, gambling addiction, food addiction. And when I say a lot, I mean, I've done quite a few interviews with people on behavioral addictions versus chemical and drug addictions. And I used to be a drug addict. I won't go into my whole story here, but I've talked about that when I was 18 years old I used free based cocaine, I was a drug addict and I'm a big admirer of 12 step groups and recovery and all that. That being said, there's a difference between habits and just flat out addiction habits. I think everyone has good habits even if the consequences of their habits are very poor. If someone wakes up every day and eats an egg McMuffin and doesn't exercise and smokes a cigarette, they've developed really good habits of waking up and eating poorly and doing that. But that's used to shame people and guilt people. What's your take on it? Well, yeah, it shames, it guilts, it raises the stress load and it's not a rational solution. So habits imply willpower and they imply intent. They imply that we've got a choice to eat this or that or move or not move. There's some conscious intent behind that. This model, this idea totally breaks down when we look at the fact that infants and toddlers are getting obese and morbidly obese at unprecedented rates. And you even talk about animals and animals. So from 1990 to 2000, about 20,000 separate animals were tracked, representing dozens of different species and many different habitats. Every single animal tracked was found to have unprecedented weight gain over that time frame. Now some people say, oh well, people feed their pets too much, well, okay, we'll dismiss that. And some could say, well, wild animals eat scraps from humans, we could dismiss that too. But many examples were, were animals on controlled diets. So their food was measured, their food was unchanged, their activity was monitored, their activity was controlled. Chimps. Between that time frame, our second closest genetic relative, they gained roughly 30% body weight per decade. Two decades back to back on controlled environments. So once you see that the whole idea about willpower, habit, indulgence, now it just doesn't fit anymore. Right? So what is causing that? There's a collective higher number of factors that push our bodies to the storage state and make us hold on to things. There's actually a clock. So this is crazy, but belly fat, the stuff around our organs is very different than the subcutaneous fat below our skin. And every part of your body has a clock. There's rhythms, there's timing to it, like you're asleep versus awake. It's obviously very different. So you can pull out someone's belly fat and you can keep it alive in a dish. Provided you've got the right ingredients, it'll survive for a little while. That's exciting. And you can watch its clock, you can Measure the activity of its biological rhythm. The more visceral fat someone's carrying, the greater degree that their clock is out of rhythm with their body central clock, which the adrenal glands control. So when this regulation is off, the body is storing and holding onto things. And it's not a matter of starving it, it's a matter of resetting it and recalibrating its timing. So you're a swimmer. One thing I and you mentioned, you know, as you got, you used to run in the beginning. I have to bring this up and I didn't have it as a question, but what I found when we were talking, when we went out to lunch in Tucson, is that you were a fan of Dr. John so Sarno's work when it comes to physical pain. And I'm a huge believer, I think the vast majority of the way that pain is treated and diagnosed is wrong. And I lived in chronic pain for most of my adult life. Which the way Sarno would describe what he called tms. In the beginning he called it tension myositis syndrome. Then it became tension myoneuro, then the mind body syndrome. And you're an expert in this area. And he said that what the pain is caused by oxygen deprivation and brought on by repressed emotions, predominately anger and rage. And so Steve Ozanich, who wrote recent books on it, he sent you some of his books. Could you explain that from your standpoint about how much the mind and emotional states affect the physical body? Well, to me, this is one of the great limitations of conventional medicine is that it is totally stuck in the biomedical model which sees only that which is physical as being real. And in that model, if you observe a change in a physical system, the cause has to be physical. The idea of non physical causation of physical events is not allowed. And for that reason, all of the whole realm of mind body medicine is viewed with great suspicion by conventional science and medicine. And that enormously limits their ability to manage these conditions. With back pain particularly, one of the most striking facts about it is that you can see, you can look at X rays and scans of people that look so horrible you can't imagine that they are not crippled by pain and they have no symptoms whatever. On the other hand, you can look at scans and X rays of people that look completely normal and the people are disabled. So there's a very low correlation between physical findings and subjective experience. And that's one of the things that Sarno is based on. So this is a major component of integrative Medicine, I call it whole person medicine, where you don't exclude the mind. That's like, it's key. Let me tell you one story. A couple weeks ago, I was in Japan, and I spent time in Okinawa, which is one of my favorite places. When I was doing research for my book Healthy Aging, I made a number of trips there because Okinawa has had the highest concentration of centenarians in the world. And it's very interesting to look at their. You know, what is it about that? It's awful hard to tease all those things apart. It's a tropical Pacific paradise with clean air and water. The Okinawan diet is one of the most interesting diets I've ever seen. An enormous, very different from mainland Japanese diet, but incredible variety of sea and land vegetables, unusual foods. Okinawans get great physical activity all the time. Not by going to gyms and using exercise machines. They're calling in fish nets and carrying water and chopping wood and hoeing in the garden and stuff like that. But I think especially there is an enormous influence of the way that aging is thought of in that culture. The old people in Okinawa are honored. They're living treasures. They're made part of all community activities. One story I collected there, which I think is very telling, is that a common cause of sibling fighting in traditional Okinawan society is over who is going to get to take care of the aging parents. Very different from here. Anyway, I was in. There's a village in Okinawa called Ogimi, which is celebrated as the Longevity Village. I had been there a number of times, but I went back this time, and they paraded out a number of their old centenarians, which they do. And all of them were asked what was the secret of their longevity. And one of the things that they all said was, eat everything. Interesting. However, in the past couple of years, Okinawan longevity has plummeted, and now Hong Kong has surpassed them, which is hard for me to believe. And the fall in Okinawan longevity is entirely attributed to McDonald's. That there has been a sudden appearance of American fast food, and people go for it. So when these people say eat everything, I don't think they meant McDonald's. I think it was their traditional vibes. But how dramatic to see this change in such a short time. No doubt. Wow, that's fascinating. One woman who was 102, I think another secret that she had, which I've started to practice, she says, you want to move your fingers a bit little with time. She was always doing things like this. She said, it's very good for the brain. So I want to read a comment, let me see if I can find it that Rick actually said because it's. There's some really good comments here. So where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Bear with me. Why am I not finding this now? It was right there. It said something along the lines of, can you undo a lifetime of bad eating? Rick, you want to mention the statement? Yeah, sure. I mean, and I was just asking for a friend. Really? Yeah, no, here it is. I got to read it the way you said it, that he's like asking for a friend. If someone has abused their bodies over decades, how much repair can occur with change of diet, thoughts, etc. And then Marcia wrote, rick, you can repair. I mean, your friend can. Smiley face. Yeah, well, truly healing takes place at the speed of thought. So there isn't a single cell in your body that's more than seven years old. In fact, your entire digestive lining will be replaced by Monday morning. So our bodies are. You're essentially a hologram of cells that are dying and being reborn in every single moment. So it's pretty amazing when you think about it. But the question that always comes up is if we're in a state of constantly repairing, rebuilding and regenerating ourselves, why do people stay sick? And the simplest way I can put it is if I buy you a brand new car, it doesn't necessarily make you a better driver. Right? I can take a brand new car and I can crash it into a wall or I can get into an accident if I don't follow the rules. So giving you brand new cells in your body doesn't mean your health is going to improve if you're still subjecting them to the same signaling. And so we get signaling from the mind, we get signaling from the blood, we get signaling from all these different mechanisms of these self regulatory mechanisms that our body has. So you can instantly change. I mean, I can instantly put somebody into a healing state. Right. Just like, oh, this is the story I wanted to share about the hrv and this is relevant. So one of my clients, she was coming to see us and her child, she didn't tell us any of this. She was trying to lose weight and that was her main focus. And she did and she got amazing results. But, but we started training her on HRV and within two weeks her son, who had crazy rambunctious, ADD adhd, like off the wall type of behavior, his behavior completely transformed. And so her boyfriend is like, what's gone into your son? He's Like a totally normal, beautiful, amazing child now. And before he was the exact opposite. And what she realized, and kind of going back to the bunny story, is that her physiology changed. So our heart produces an electromagnetic field and, and it pulsates all around us. So mothers and children really have a strong connection, right, because the child was within the mom at one time. So their pulses are very closely connected. And so you can create a constructive interference or a destructive interference. So let's say Joe, you and I are hanging out and we're vibing at the same frequency, having a good time, laughing, we're going to have a constructive interference. So when our heart fields collide with one another, that's why networking is so important, especially in person. When our heart fields cannot collide with one another, we're going to have, they're going to double, they're going to amplify, but if we're opposites, then they're going to cancel each other out. So what she started doing is she started working on her heart field and unknowingly, she didn't know she was doing this. But within two weeks, her son's behavior completely transformed. And it's because now she was creating a constructive heart field with her son as opposed to the exact opposite. Now this is why the words that we use and the energy that we carry are so important. So if your heart says one thing and your body says, or your mouth says something else, people are going to know. This happens in sales all the time. I'll give you a quick story. So when you're selling something to somebody, if your price point or your offer takes you out of heart coherence, it's going to completely suck the energy out of the room. So you might have an amazing conversation relationship with somebody, but as soon as your heart filled changes because you're not resonating with the price or you're not resonating with the offer, then the client's going to feel it right away. They're not going to know what it is, but the deal is going to fall apart. So it's really important that we become hyper conscious of our heart field because it impacts people around us in a positive and or potentially negative way. Turns out that the sleep rhythm is all based on core body temperature. So as your core body temperature rises and falls throughout the day, that's how your sleep rhythm actually turns on and turns off. So on average, a healthy person's body temperature starts to decrease around 11 o'. Clock. You know what the national average is for bedtime? 10:30 why is that? Because people get sleepy around 11, when you have that core body temperature drop. It's actually a signal to your brain to release melatonin. Melatonin is that key that starts the engine for sleep. Ok, we're going to talk a lot about melatonin in some of the proper uses and improper uses of melatonin that are out there. But it's very important that you understand that the core body temperature is really what happens here. There's actually a second small dip in core body temperature. It happens between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. You know what else happens between 1 and 3 in the Afternoon? People get tired. Right. That's where the siesta comes from originally. So when you go down to Latin American countries, that's part of the evolutionary process of sleep. It's pretty interesting when you start to talk about the evolution of sleep. Most people think, well, sleep is that thing that I go into the back of that room in the house and it's dark and hopefully it's quiet. And I go in, maybe six, seven, eight hours later I come out and hopefully I feel re energized and generate some good ideas and things like that. Sleep has evolved. Disease evolves, we evolve. Sleep evolves. Sleep today is nothing like sleep was 100 years ago. Sleep today is nothing like sleep was 10 years ago. Do you know what the single biggest disruptor of sleep was in the last 100, 150 years? You should all know this because you read a paper on it last night, right? Nobody read the paper. Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison, that's correct. The invention of the light bulb turns out to be the single biggest disruptor of sleep that there is, because we used to be an agricultural society. And what would we do? We would go to bed when the sun went down and we would wake up when the sun rose. But we didn't actually do that. We actually had two forms of sleep. People would sleep for about seven hours, then they would wake up, they would have a second meal. A lot of people would have sex with their bed partner, they would visit with family members and then they would go back for their second sleep. And then they would wake up with the dawn. And it was an agricultural society. They'd go out and they'd tend to the fields and things like that. Well, with the invention of the light bulb, it all changes because people could work at night. You know what I personally think the second most disruptive invention out there? Overtime. What do people do with overtime? They get paid time and a half or double time to work so what do they do? They work longer hours. They still want to spend a lot of time and energy with their family. So what happens? It slowly starts to shrink their sleep. One of the top questions that I get asked is, Michael, can I hack my sleep? Can I get eight hours in six hours? I'm going to actually show you a way that some people have figured out how to do that. So anybody in here know that they're a morning type of person by a raise of hands? People better in the mornings. Okay, so that's about half of you. How about evening people who are night owls? Okay, night owls on this side. Yeah. Now, it's tough to be both. There's actually, believe it or not, biological influence on whether or not you're a night owl or a morning lark. It's actually genetically determined and it has to do with your core body temperature. Here's what we see. This is core body temperature in Celsius. And these are hours across the evening. So remember that dip I was talking about that happens for the siesta? Some people's core body temperature rises a little earlier. Guess what? They're morning types. Some people's rises a little later. They're night owls. So these are things that are actually biologically determined. And when people come to me and they say, well, Michael, I want to turn myself into a morning person, good luck with that. It's not going to be as easy as you might think. There are ways to do that that are pretty interesting, and we can talk about that in a minute as well. So what are two or three of the most important discoveries that you've learned about your own body and your ability to perform when doing this? Because you do some crazy shit in our country. I have to tell them what I did in our country. Okay, so. And then we can show the video later. So actually, it was the last phone call I had with the high chicks. M A. I passed away during COVID and we talked probably six months before he died. How old was he? I want to say it was 80. 283. Somewhere in his mid to mid-80s, he hit it. And I'd already had a stroke, so I really just called it to sort of check in on him, see how he was doing. Little known fact about flow and Csikszentmihalyi is everybody talks about flow and performance. Csikszentmihei spent most of his life working on flow and adult development. Turns out, for reasons that we can talk about later, he argued that flow, on the other side of a flow state, learning Increases our skills increase we're more adaptive, more complex. Wisdom, empathy, also get increased flow. He argued that this is the engine of adult development, that it was through flow states that we actually mature as adults. Now, he argued it was the only. It was the primary driver of adult development. I think that was overstating the case a little bit. But he spent most of his career working on adult development of flows. Talking to him, and I'm a lifelong skier, and my plan for my later years was to ski as much as possible. And I'm a big mountain skier, which means I like to take big, big risks. And I like really gnarly, really scary, hard lines. And I was talking to Mike, and a bunch of his early essays had been translated out of Italian. And I read them. He was always an outdoorsman. He was a rock climber and lived in Montana, hiked a lot. Bless you. But I started to realize that this guy was a much more serious mountaineer and rock climber than he ever told anybody. Like he was in these articles that got translated, I would tell you he was like Talking about early 60s Yosemite Valley rock climbers by name. And I was like, there's no way you would know those names if you weren't in that community. And so I called him up to talk to him about this, and I was like, you know, we were talking about it and he just. Out of nowhere, he's like, stephen, you got to be careful. I was like, what do you mean? Have you lost the plot? What are you supposed to be talking about, Mike? He's like, you know, you do something climbing mountains, rock climbing your whole life for flow, and then you get to be my age, and some days you can't even get out of bed. Forget about climbing mountains. You need a backup plan. You gotta be careful. And he was just telling me, one flow junkie to another, have a backup plan for how you get into flow as you age. Otherwise you could find yourself locked out of this. And that's a real issue. And it really landed with me. Other side of the story is I've been continuing to study peak performance aging. And there's a whole bunch of new theories that said that. I basically looked at in flow science and body cognition, network neuroscience, a couple other places that said not only can you teach an old dog new tricks, old dogs do better than younger dogs at learning certain new tricks. And if you. This stuff that was worked in the lab theoretically was accurate. Anybody over 40, over 50, over 60, over 70 should be able to onboard really difficult, challenging physical Skills. Supposedly impossible skills. So I decided at 53, I was going to teach myself on park skiing. Park skiing is the discipline of skiing that involves doing tricks off jumps on rails and boxes and wall rides. It's incredibly acrobatic. It's very dangerous for about 11 different biological reasons. It's considered almost just really hard to learn. If you're over 30, 35 by the time you get to 40, 50, it's downright impossible. It's crazy. Most people. I have nothing funny to say. No, someone just spilled us. I got the flow. Yeah. By the way, every time I hear somebody talk about it, I think I'm at a Plumbing. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. See, that's group flow right there. What the hell was I saying? To test it, I made a list of 20 tricks that would cover zero to intermediate. And once you get to intermediate in any sport, you can sort of take the random falls out of the equation and you can be a little more intentional, a little safer. There are a bunch of reasons why I wanted to do this, but I had zero experience. I could ski mountains, but that's like the difference between speed skating, where you're in contact with the surface of the earth and moving in a single direction, and figure skating, where it's above the surface of the earth and you're twirling and flipping and all that stuff's a radically different sport. And I figured if it took me five years, cool. It took me five years. I accomplished all 20 tricks on that trick list in under a season, which was wild. Ryan Wicks, my ski partner, Wave, who works with me, Flare Research Collective. Ryan was a former sponsored athlete at Park Steer who had gotten injured, had a family, walked away, came back when I came back, and he made more progress in a single season than he's ever seen. And at that point we were like, okay, this is cool and it's working, but we've got, like, the sexiest pilot study in the history. Pilot studies, but that's all we've done. So the following year, we came back, and this is the video Joe was going to talk about. We took 17 older adults, 16, ages 29 to 68, used the exact same protocol we were using in four days on the mountain. Taught them how to park ski or how to park snowboard. We then stripped out the action sports because maybe not for everyone. I don't understand that, but apparently not for everyone. And we turned it into a training called Enter the Gnar. That the whole goal of. We'll talk about this a little bit, but mindset is crucial for peak performance aging. Having a positive mindset towards aging, meaning I think the second half of my life is filled with thrilling possibilities. I'm sure my best years are ahead of me for a lot of neuroimmunological reasons translates to an additional seven and a half years of health and longevity. So where to start with peak performance aging? You start with mindset. You start by working in your mindset. And with when we stripped out the access boards, we just wanted to see if we could explode people's mindsets towards aging. And maybe it worked beautifully. I think it was 340 people. 500 exaggeration. I think 340 was the number worked really, really beautifully there. So now we're kind of confident that it works and onto something. That's the story of those experiments are what the heart in our country. And you asked what I did you what did you learn about your body, your ability to perform like what? So to make sense, I have to tell you one thing about flow. Flow states have triggers. You want more flow in your life. There are preconditions that lead to more flow. First thing to know, flow follows focus. It only shows up when all our attention is in the here and now. That's what all the triggers do. They drive our attention into the present moment. The most famous of these triggers, which I think somebody mentioned yesterday is three challenge skills Balance. We pay the most attention to the task at hand when the challenge of the task slightly exceeds our skill set. So you want to stretch but not snap. Put it emotionally. There's a sweet spot between anxiety. Too much stimulation and boredom. Not enough stimulation. What's known as the flow channel. If you speak physiology, it's the earth stops and curves. Years ago, sheikhs at Mihalyi sat down with a Google mathematician, tried to figure out what's the difference between the challenges skills of the average folks. And they came up with 4% as the difference. But it was a back of the envelope calculation. It wasn't real science. It was just a thing they did. Chip Conley actually told me about it. Mike did and Chip Conley told me about it. But we took it into the fluorosis collective ran a couple years study design. We found out it was pretty close to accurate. It's really hard to test, really hard to figure it out. But we thought it was really cost accurate. But this is the first thing that we did in older adults and older here means anybody over 30 actually for reasons that we can get to. But once you sort of cross that threshold, all your trauma Stays with you. Right. We call it allostatic load. It's trauma. The impact of trauma over time on our physiology and our psychology. It's known as allostatic load. Allostatic overload is one of the number one causes of burnout. But what we started to figure out is that because, because of allostatic load, especially when you're going after difficult physical challenges, sweet spot is no longer 4 to 5%, it's down to 1%. So it's way shrunk down and you don't even notice it because a lot of it's subconscious. But there are subconscious breaks and governors on performance that tend to be there. So the idea was we're going to start with an established motor pattern, something that you can do 100% of the time with perfect success, no fear, and build on it one micro emotion at a time because of this. So we were trying to go like one inch at a time, was the motto. And for myself, Ryan, for most of it, we actually had to hold people back, slowed them way, way, way down in how they'd normally want to progress. Even when everything was going well, even when everything was working, we slowed everybody down immense. And it worked. You got to go slow to go fast and a lot of peak performance. And this was definitely the case here. So that was one of the main things we did. And what we're going to do too, we're just going to go for a few more minutes, then we'll take a break, we'll do lunch, and then we'll come back with Stephen a little bit later. What are the biggest obstacles as people age that get in their way of. I mean, because the slow rot. Right. I think they do the wrong. Really the biggest obstacles is people do the wrong things. They reach for the wrong levers. So if you want to peak performance aging in a sentence, everything you need to know about peak performance aging, if you want to rock till you drop, you have to engage on a regular, regular basis in challenging social and creative activities that demand. And all these words mean something. So if you talk about what they mean, dynamic, deliberate play take place in novel outdoor environments. That's the biggest lever we have at our disposal. I'll say it again. We want to engage in novel, creative and social activities. Novel, challenging, creative and social activities that demand dynamic, deliberate play and take place in novel outdoor environments. Talk about your lean body coaching program, your online program, because you've done a lot of the stuff face to face. There's all the different forms. So how do you. How do you do it with people. Now how do you train? Okay, so this is my legacy, right. I wanted to leave behind my life's work. And so online, we replicated my clinical work online. And so everybody has their own nutritionist that's trained by me. And the first three months is devoted entirely on how to eat to get lean. And the final three months are devoted entirely to relapse prevention, how to keep the weight off. We have tons of recipes because I want to show people there is nothing you can eat if you make it. And so at the end of the day, all of my psychological work is on there in video format. Right. All the recipes are in video format. If you don't know how to cook, our coaches are there to teach you how to cook and all that kind of stuff. So all of that 40 years. Let me show you one other little thing, because it's the little things sometimes we don't know. I just want to show you a slide that we did here a while back. Raise your hand if water packed tuna is lower in fat than oil. Just raise your hand if it is. I'm not scamming you. Yeah. Water packed tunas. So this is water packed tuna and spring water. And I bought these two cans at the same store at the same time. And the first can you can see 1 times 9 is 9 divided by 70 means that's about 13% fat. Okay. Now the exact same food, how many grams of fat are in the same food? 5.5times 9 is 45 divided by 195 is 47% fat. But oil packed tuna is only 33. If I were needing an oil to get lean, why am I eating water when it's actually higher than that, which is an oil? Expecting a different outcome. This represents the different times a year they catch the fish. That's been going on your whole life. So what we're doing in lean body coaching is we're giving you access to information you just won't find anywhere else because they won't put that on tv, but they lose their advertising dollars. Right. They don't want to know that stuff. But it's these little things that start to head out. I just want my clients not to give up anything. Right. But just be more aware so that it can lead them down a path of just making better choices. They both say spring water. They are both spring water. They are at different times of the year. Yeah. Do you know every November through March, water packed tuna becomes higher in fat than oil right now, this time of year, because of their Migratory season. Look at the ingredients. So one uses vegetable broth and salt, the other one uses hydrolyzed casein. Yeah. You know, that's a protein. That's not a fact. I mean, it's so obvious to. There's so many experts that just know. The food labeling is such a bunch of propaganda horseshit. How? I mean, why is it so hard to get it? Because of lobbyists. Right. Lobbyists are in Washington to protect the interest of the companies they represent over your health. Now listen to this. Are not labels that the guidelines by which we have to choose to use, you know, to get healthy foods. If the very labels themselves are deceitful and misleading, how can you ever choose healthy foods? So if you put me in that position, I'd wipe out all the loopholes. I know them all. Check out this. You know, and this is not. These are just little things, right. It's not a big deal. Okay? Zero calories. Fat says zero. How many calories and grams of fat are in that container? Zero. Well, if I see zero, why wouldn't I just uncap it and pour it on my baked potato? This has 900 calories in 90 grams of fat. It is perfectly okay in America to tell you that a food is fat free when it's 100% fat. That's the law. Now the law states that if in your serving size it has a half a gram of fat, you can just say it has none. Let me read a serving site. I have to have Parkinson's disease to be able to do this. It's one in a quarter spray, right? Just a quarter spread. Right. So I'm supposed to get 905 servings out of this little thing, right? I don't mind that you use it. I mind that you use it thinking it's one thing when it's really not. That's all we're there for, is an educational resource to help you find your way to a healthier body without deprivation and giving up. And honestly, that's why so many marketers get lumped in because there are some really deceptive people that, that use marketing to just manipulate and lie and it's unfortunate. And grab a mic if there's anything you guys want to. I want to grab that water. I just want to say a couple things. First of all, what you said, I actually eat exactly like you do. So it was interesting you said that because I went to plant based with pescatarian a little bit of eggs for all the same reasons. Because, because my wife and I did a lot of Research over a number of years. So we went four years ago to change our entire diet around. It's a pain in the ass. I mean, it's total change. But here's the thing that's not talked about and I want maybe you can answer. This is what I Learned about maybe 25 years ago through. I can't remember where it was exactly, but this is basically the thing about habits. And this behavioral change in this area is very, very difficult. In all areas is very difficult when it's substantial behavioral change. And behavioral change is based on changing habits, you know, little things at a time. So when you make a major change, this is a major change on diet. Most people think, well, a habit is formed in 14 to 21 days. There's different stuff out there. Again, that's misleading because it's formed a habit is not known. This is scientifically proven for two full years. So anytime I've made a major change in my life, and my wife and I did this four years ago, I said, honey, we have to do this for 730 days. We have to do this straight for 730 days. And then it'll be a permanent change in our life. If we want to get our health to where it's going to be. We go on this diet, completely changed everything. Went off to a place for three weeks to do that. So we got all the right education besides what we already knew to do it. But we came up with the exact same diet that you came up with. And my wife was on diabetic medicine. She was also on, what do you call it, Statin. Thank you. And she went off both of those and still off both of those because of those dietary changes. And then our weight went down to our normal weight. And every time we do a DECA stand or anything else, we come out exactly perfectly in the middle of what we're supposed to be for our body type and everything else. So you see the power of food. Right. So I wanted to support you, but I also want to make sure everybody know in this room, if you're going to make a change, any major change in your life, two years, it's not 14 days. It's not 21 days. Actually, it's not. It's lifetime. Right. I meant to get it so it's gonna stick. But I don't see that, that it takes that long. Right. Because here's what I'd like to see. Well, this is statistic through the insurance industry on driving and everything else. When you see the rates they've Learned this over time that your kid doesn't know to step on the long skinny one or the fat horizontal one. When they're trying to make a decision on driving and they make mistakes and they fail. Found it. After two years, all the rates come down because they've done millions of these and that's when they know how to drive versus they have been taught how to drive. Two different, entirely different skills. I'm not skill, but I gotta tell you, it's not looking at how you teach somebody to make a simple change, right? So if I, if you leave my office and I just say, listen, do you think, do you want to make those two little changes? Yeah, go do it. And then once those two changes are in place, let's make the next ones. So it's a process. Process. And you know, when I watch how people change, no two people change at the same rate at the same time. Right? But I did notice that successful people go through a series of steps. The first one is awareness, right? They become acutely aware that what they're doing is no longer working for them. But that's not enough to change because how many people are aware they have a problem? They're still not changing. Right. We heard your drug stories, right? The second step though is contemplation. Hell, we haven't even got into the hookers yet. That's all there is. The second step I watch successful people go is to contemplation. What you have to do is you have to think about how this change is going to affect you. Is this going to be more fun or less fun? Is this something you really think you can do in the face of socializing? The next step is knowledge. And this is where I see a lot of people fail because they take in the wrong knowledge. Every step they take going forward fails them. So if you can give people straightforward, accurate information, their success rate is going to be higher just based on that. The next step, then they move into action, they start making the changes. But this is where most people are deluded. You don't go into the final step. On average, most people go into from action back to contemplation three or four or five times, depending on how long it's going to take them to get what they didn't learn to go on to the final step, which is self accountability. So I watch what successful people do. There's no mystery to me as to why they're successful. I watch what unsuccessful people do. There's no mystery as to why they aren't. I'm not disputing that research at all. But what I'm saying at the end of the day is I think we have to look at how we're educating people to make the appropriate changes that they're willing to make at the time. Thanks. What I'm finding is people are coming to me after a month or two months at the gym, trying to work out all the time or one of these things, thinking that after certain short period of time it's going to set in when they don't recognize there's a lot of other elements. And I love your whole step process in that. But it's a, it's a long term process, it's a lifetime, it's not short. And I think a lot of us are under this misguided, you know, that this is just going to happen after a month or two, fast, easy. But wait, that's not long. Yeah, it's at least two years for most people, if not long. Yeah. You know, the thing is, is that it's really weird because. Because we live in such an instant gratification world. See, it's a lot easier to get a hit by eating a pepperoni pizza than it is to go to the gym and drink water and work out and cook your food. Yeah. I mean, so the more that we become a culture of instantaneous, just the more difficult it becomes psychologically. And here's the whole reason that I bring you here and talk like this and that sort of stuff is that you mentioned. It is coping. How you eat has everything to do with how you cope with life. And you may be doing a lot of wonderful things in your life. You may be reading the best books, you may be highly educated, you may even be doing your best to sleep and you have rituals. But if you insert shitty food, infrequent eating, if you don't nurture yourself well, you. Your ability to cope physically, psychologically, emotionally, so much of it is affected by exercise and eating. So what I'd love to do is have you give some suggestions, some things that would deliver relatively quickly so that they can. And I don't mean quickly like, oh, these are quick fixes, what I mean. So I'd love for people to be able to leave here having a paradigm shift on how they think about food and about exercise that they could start seeing results. So it literally becomes a lifetime improvement in how they operate. I think one good way to do that is to call this the method of simplicity. What I do is take notes in the original interview and I would like you to write down the top five things you think are holding you back from getting what you say you want, what are some of them? I eat out too much. I don't cook. I eat too much red meat. I eat too much fried food. I drink too much alcohol. Right. I mean, whatever that list is for you, if you make that list out and you list five things, I would encourage you to look at that list and ask yourself which one you're ready to work on right now. Spend two or three weeks or a month just fixing that one thing before you move on to the other. I will share with you this. What the most successful clients learn is that there's one thing on that list that if you focused on the list I just gave you, there's one thing if you focused on, it changes almost all of them. If you cook your own food and carry it, you will have massive results. I watch people fight and defend their position to remain overweight. At the very same time they tell me they want to lose weight. Let me show you how that conversation will go. It could be even with drug addiction, because this is so parallel. So much, right? Yeah. Honestly, I think so much of people's obesity is. Is literally rooted in addiction. Yeah, but unfortunately, with food, you can't give it up. Right. With drugs, you can get it out of your life. You can make new associations and relationships. So that's why it can be a difficult change. But I will tell you this. I will watch people fight and defend their position to remain overweight even when they say they don't want it. I will say to somebody, listen, if you just cook and carry your own food, your problem will go away. Oh, I can't cook. I don't have time for that. That point of resistance, trust me, is the area you should focus the most attention on. Wherever your points of resistance are, that's where you need the most work. And that's what we do as clinicians. We really listen to what you're saying, how you're saying it, and then try to get in there and figure out how we could help you overcome that particular resistant point. As Doug said earlier, people, many people spend their health creating their wealth, and then they have to spend their wealth trying, trying to regain their health. What if we just valued health number one? Hello, fellow Genius members, Genius network members. We're so excited to be part of your family. You heard. I'm Jennifer Carroll. And I'm Jessica. And we are J and J. And we are going to talk to you guys today about how to live large and live long. So this is a room full of entrepreneurs. Now raise your hand if you live life, go big or go home kind of way. Yeah, I kind of thought it was about everyone. Well, that was my dad's life motto. Just like you, my dad was a rock star entrepreneur. He lived large. And actually, according to this poster right here, entrepreneurs are the new rock stars. Just like you, my dad valued success at a very young age. Travelers who loves to travel in this room. Yep, dad loved to travel. Just like you, my dad loved his sports. He ran marathons, he wake surfed, and he cherished all 18 summers with his family. Just like you, my dad was a thought leader who wanted to make a difference. Dad lived to give. And actually, for the past 20 years, we've been going down to Mexico, building homes for homeless families in Mexico. Just like you, my dad loved his life and he loved his wife, his playmate. Entrepreneurs. You guys take care of everything. You take care of your business, you take. You take care of your staff, you take care of your family. But do you take that same care of your health? I ask you, do you value health as number one? Because you know what? My dad didn't. My dad lived large, but he never went to the doctor, as you see right here. He's a 6 3, 220 pound guy. He worked out every single day, but he bragged about not going to the doctor. And I do believe that if he did go to the doctor and if he actually got checked and if he was actually proactive about his health, he would be in this room right here. And that he would actually be one of the 97% of men who survive prostate cancer if detected early. So, yes, I encourage you. And I know you guys, live large, but live long. My dad made his first millions in his 20s, but he made his first widow in her 40s. You're probably asking yourself, what on earth could this grieving widow and her darling daughter share with you today that could be worth $250,000? It's an excellent question, but I have a question back for you. Do you want to be unstoppable? Do you want to go on and make $250,000 again and again, living our live large, live long philosophies? Yeah. Okay, then imagine, if you will. You're not here at a genius network meeting. Sadly, you're on your deathbed, surrounded by your family and friends, your loved ones, and you're fighting for your last breath. And in that moment, I want to ask you, what would you do? How much would you pay for more time how much would you pay for 250,000 more hours? That's 28 and a half more years. I know my Philip would have paid a lot more than 250,000 thousand dollars. How much would you pay for more time? Time to scale up our businesses. Scale up your businesses. Time to keep living large as entrepreneurs. Time to watch your son live out his dream. Time to walk your daughter down the aisle. Time to grow old with the person that you love. Like you. My Phil thought he was unstoppable. But at the age of 52, he was stopped by prostate cancer. Steve and I in Forbes magazine. O Carol is 25 years old. Rich's cheesecake particle on our Marina. Dave and I in Flair magazine. Wayne Gretzky is with us. That's cool. I know that footage is hard to watch. It's excruciating to remember. Now, you had a chance here today to meet my darling little mini me daughter. But I also want you to know that I actually gave birth to a human truck. Yes. And as my husband was holding the screaming newborn. I'm panting. I said, is it a boy? And he goes, it's a hockey player. And that's exactly what he became. A professional hockey player. Six' four, 220, missing teeth. Power forward enforcer, professional hockey player. A couple months before Phil passed away, I went up to Canada to see Austin. And when I was up there, one of his practices, one of his coaches, Coach Jeff, comes up to me and he says to me, I'm sorry, I hear your husband is really sick. And Austin says he's fighting for his life. Can I ask what he has? I said, prostate cancer. He looked at me like, I'm sorry. I thought everyone survived prostate cancer. I said, yeah, if you go to the doctor and you get checked early enough, you can be one of the 97% of men that survive this disease. But, yeah, my husband wasn't that guy. By the way, Coach Jeff, how old are you? 48. You get checked regularly, right? Oh, no, look at me. I'm in great shape. I'm on the ice with the guys every day. I eat organic. I don't drink or smoke. And besides, I hate going to the doctor. And I don't need a doctor going there, if you know what I mean. Well, I watched this big, burly Canadian hawkfish, and he just. He metamorphed into my fill. Standing there healthy, and I just lost it. I'm like, what? I just said, no, you go in and you get checked. If you don't do it for you you do it for your wife and your kids. You do it so you can watch your son live out his dream. And you can watch walk your daughter down the aisle, and you can grow old as the person that you love. Because, you know, my Philip, he can't do that anymore because he's home and he's dying. No, you go in and you get checked, and you bend over and you take it like a man. He's like, whoa. I'm usually yelling at your kid on the ice like that. Fast forward a couple months. Phil's passed away of prostate cancer. We're back in Canada watching one of Austin's hockey games, and coach Jeff comes up and gives us his condolences. But then he leans in and he kind of whispers, and he looks around. He says, jen, I went in and I got checked, bent over and took it like a man. And, you know, when the doctor was putting on his glove, I said, doc, I'm doing this for a woman, and it's not my wife. Like, a lot of information there. How many of you guys have children? Raise your hand. Whoa. You guys would do anything for your kids, right? Hey, dad, will you teach me how to drive? Hey, mom, will you help me pick out my prom dress? Hey, dad, will you help me pick out my new cool shoes? Hey, dad, will you watch me as I play my first NHL hockey game? Hey, dad, will you walk me down the aisle when I get married just like you guys? My dad would have done anything for Austin and I, but he can't do any of those things anymore because he's not here. When we hold our crystal ball and we ask that infamous question, what do you want? We see a man putting on a bow tie. He picks up the phone, he says, I read your book. We saw you speak, got checked, went to the doctor, found out I had cancer, got treated, and I'm a survivor. I'm about to walk my daughter down the aisle, and I had to reach out and say, thank you for making a difference. If I could give this book to one person, just one person, I would give it to my Phil 12 years ago, because I believe he'd be sitting here in this room as a Genius network member if he knew the stories in this book. Now, this message is not just for the women or for the men. It's also for the women. And you know what? Right now, it is Breast Cancer awareness month. So, yes, I want you to live large and make magical memories, But I also want you to live long and take care of those memories. Memories. Health number One for everyone in this room. We're here today to share our stories in hopes of encouraging you to take action. To not only continue to live large as entrepreneurs, but to live long and value health. Number one and get checked. And there's actually something you can do right now to add time to your life and your loved one's life. So I actually want you guys to take out your phones. Seriously, seriously, I want you to do this. And in the past 10 minutes you've been thinking about someone and it might have been yourself, which is totally okay. But I want you to send this message to that person. I love you. Live long, get checked and bend over and take it like a man. There's a great book, the Diet Cure and the Mood Cure by Julia Ross. Have you ever read them? Not only have I read them, but I actually met Julia Ross over a decade ago and she actually took me through a supplement regimen specifically for addiction because she's one of the top neuro nutrient therapists in the world. This guy is a connector, he knows everybody, so that's not very surprising. But her work is so powerful and a few lessons I pulled away from it is. I mean that's where I learned of neurotransmitters. And you know, some of the things, I guess to set the stage. Our neurotransmitter chemicals in our brain are what make us feel comfortable inside of us. They're literally mood shaping chemicals inside of us. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, gamma aminobutyric acid. Probably didn't pronounce that right and I probably don't even care. So when we're eating sugar, alcohol, processed foods, flours, those actually displace our neurotransmitter chemicals. And those food substances can sit in the parts of the brain that should house the neurotransmitter chemicals. And because there's crappy things in there, it tells the brain stop making neurotransmitters because our neurotransmitter receptor sites are full. But they're not full of neurotransmitters, they're full of crap. So we can get into this place where being inside of ourself feels like we're laying on a bed of broken glass. So now we start perpetuating potentially addictive patterns because we're trying to get away from ourself so we might self medicate with more sugar because we feel like crap because we're eating sugar, right? Because I just want to escape this sensation right now of feeling like I'm laying on a bed of broken glass. But then when you cut out a lot of the crap and start eating real food, like all of our neurotransmitter chemicals are made from proteins. We need, like, real food, not the crappy food, to help balance that out so we can have the biochemical potential to feel good inside of us, which we don't necessarily get. You know, if someone's going to a 12 step meeting. Correct. Given your community. But the donuts you're eating, the coffee you're drinking, too much of, that can actually be making the body component worse while you're making the community component better. Exactly. And sugar is really the gateway drug. Sugar is the biggest culprit to the stepping stone for addictive behavior. And we are feeding so much shit to ourselves and to people into children, and. And they're setting the stage for these individuals to really be more susceptible to becoming addicts. Like, for instance, earlier I was saying, there's a Dr. David Arneson, I never say his name right. Theriversource.org, i believe, is his website in Phoenix. And I went and met with him with my friend Paul Mittman, who is the president of the Southwest. Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and then Tom Faris, who is the Arizona Corporation commissioner. Because we're working on doing some stuff in Arizona to find a treatment system that we can have people, instead of them going to jail or prison, we can have them go through this and prove that it has efficacy to try to help people that have not committed a violent crime, first offense, that instead of throwing them in jail or prison, we get them treatment. And so one of the things we're working on is finding the best way that we can actually do this and then see if we can. I'm working with politicians, although my world is not that. I want to just be the catalyst and let the people that know how to make these things happen with laws take it from there, you know, hand over the baton. But I want to see if we can get something tested here in Arizona, and then if it works, if we can take it from state to state to state, state. And we. So when we met with him, he said he's been treating people for 16 years with IV treatments. He's very familiar with Julia Ross's work. He's an expert in neuronutrients and using amino acid therapies and IVs to treat addicts. And he said to me, and I'm not going to say it exactly because he's really brilliant at the way he explained it. He said that when you see like an addict on the street that's homeless or missing teeth, he said in a lot of cases what you're seeing is multiple modern day scurvy and they're just not even getting good vitamin C. And a lot of these addicts are eating donuts, they're drinking sodas, they're eating candy bars, they're eating fast food, they're getting very terrible nutrition and they have a ton of gut problems. And he said if he talked about serotonin is produced in the gut, dopamine is produced in the brain, and if you basically do not fix the gut, then they're always going to be in a craving state. And he said something that was fascinating. He said if you do not repair the gut and get them producing happy chemicals, what happens is if you send them to jail or prison or you send them to rehab and they can sit down with the best talk therapist, the cravings are still going to be there and they're still going to be an addict. And I said, if that's actually true, millions of people are being thrown in jail and going into treatment without having their body producing. And they can be sitting down with even smart people that are trying to guide and direct them. But the cravings never go away. And what happens, these people then have to get drugs in prison. So we have just as bad of a drug problem and drug addiction happening and people doing drugs in prison and we're trying to lock these people up and, and keep them away from it. I mean, if you can get drugs in prison, drugs are everywhere. And see, here's the challenge. The challenge aren't even the drugs. The drugs are just a symptom of a far deeper problem. The addiction is a symptom of a deeper problem, which is disconnection, which is biochemical, which is all of these things because if you have biochemistry, the body isn't connected. So I don't say connection, just in terms of community connection. I mean you got to make shit work wiring in your body. And so what he does is he has a lot of success with IV treatments. And I said, well, can you treat these addicts orally? He goes, well, if their gut is so damaged, no, you actually have to bypass it. But with IVs and we're talking a few hundred dollars of doing IV treatments where over a period of a few weeks and he can really fix a lot of the gut issues with people and then getting them eating foods that are not damaging to them. And I said, if this is actually true, this will literally save millions of lives. If we could figure out how to do that and then make it available. So one of the many things we're working on is trying to bring these brilliant people and seeing how do we scale that. And so what I'm trying to do is just be the curator and share this information with people and I'm going to interview these people, we're going to videotape them, we're going to put the documentaries out, we're going to really find, you know, take. Does this really, you know, work with numerous people. So one of the things that we're working on is seeing how do we set it up and take literally the worst addicts, you know, street addicts, people that are homeless, and see if we can actually, you know, help them get out of that craving state. But that's just one of many things. But you know, it's, it's fascinating because if you look at what they feed, feed prisoners, if you look at what most addicts eat, I mean, their diets are so unhealthy and so therefore, you know, their body is not creating the things it needs to cope. Yeah. I would dare say that the foods a lot of them are eating, a lot of the average non addicts are eating as well, are foods that might make the belly full, but they're foods that actually take more nutrition from the body than what the food foods deliver. And that is absolutely a recipe for, it's literal self destruction. Okay, so let's talk about, aside from food, what other lifestyle things help enhance just overall health that are absolute must, what are just the things you really need? So this is where when I was sitting watching you interview Arianna the other day, I am 100% in agreement, actually. I think the number one thing you can do for your health bar, anything else, is sleep. If I had to pick one thing, it'd be sleep. Because one poor night of sleep, you're going to be hungrier, you're more insulin resistant, your cortisol's higher, you're going to crave more sugar. I always say you're hungrier and not for salmon, you know, Right. Oh yeah, you want to eat crappy food, right? And it starts this bad cycle because then you, you want to have the latte and the muffin and then your energy drops and all of a sudden you're having caffeine all day long and then you can't sleep. So then you've got to like hit yourself with sleeping pills or alcohol. Then you Feel like crap the next day and it just like ba boom, ba boom, ba boom. So good. Sleep habits are huge. Stress tolerance. I hate the idea of stress management because you tell a stressed person they have to manage their stress and they want to slap you. Right. But especially from being in the hospital with a, you know, a near death experience with the child, it really became clear to me that stress tolerance is everything. And so there are so many things that you can do to teach your body how to tolerate higher and higher levels of stress. Which the more successful you want to be, the better you better be at tolerating stress. Right. So it's not. Most of us can't get the stress out of our lives. So we have to learn how to handle it better. One of the best ways to learn how to handle it better is burst traffic training. So for exercise, I don't believe in endurance exercise at all. So you don't go for long distance runs? Zero. I did. I was a vegan endurance athlete in my 20s. I was about 10% body fat higher, Very angry. Not happy angry. Right. So no, I only do burst style cardio training or hiit training, which means, let's say if I was going to go out for, for a run, I'd walk first and I'd sprint all out for 30 seconds, walk it off for a minute, sprint again for 30 seconds and do that to accumulate four to eight total minutes of bursting three days a week. Then I do a lot of resistance training and I'm ready for you whenever you want a rematch in the gym. I know you've got some work to do before we do that. You're so sweet to me. I really appreciate that video even though I know, I know I did that. We're just. Now you're like, I don't want to like go back at it. I'm going to embarrass you. The gym. We're going to videotape this. Let's do that. Let's do. Okay, that's it. But if I do, what is that going to accomplish for me? I mean, I'll just still look like a jerk. Yes, I'm in the total. Win. Win. Do you mind talking about how old you are? I am 51. Yeah, 51. I am better at 51 than I was at 40 and I believe I'll be better at 55 because we just keep learning more. There's so much that you, you can do. But honestly, birth style training raises growth hormone. The most aging thing you can do. Eat sugar and run a lot and Be stressed out. It's like, have a. I have a lot of stress in my life. I'm totally happy. And I've learned how to manage, deal with that stress, tolerate that stress. Bringing a kid out of a brain injury is a stressful situation. So you remember Hugh Downs, Like Hugh Hughes, now 93, 94. I interviewed him when he was 87, and I asked him about stress. And he had like, one of the world records of most time on broadcast television on 2020 for years. He said there's a big difference between stress and distress. He's like, we grow from stress. He's like, if you work out, you're going to. Actually, that's how you build distress. Tears you down. And so I think in a lot of ways, when I hear you say that, it's like weight training for your brain. And then I know that I'm going to get better because now I finally have given in. You have pummeled me with this. And I'm starting tm, so I'm going to start meditating. And again, I look at health as a journey. And if you don't address all this stuff, it's like a giant snowball picking up speed, going down a hill. But if you address this, you can totally level it out or bring it up. And so I believe we can be at our best, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond. And you just keep looking at habits that you can put in. Right. So my next one will be meditation. I'm always looking at anything I can do to get an edge. And there's so many more things out there. Yeah. Even as we're sitting here videotaping, there's a couple that are in the room that actually are in the float pod business where you actually float. They manufacture float pods. They have a company called True Rest. And so there's lots of ways that you can handle stress. Yeah. And I'm very excited to try that because if I could, maybe that'll become my new meditation. Maybe I can meditate in the float pod. You can think about that. It's a two for one. Exactly. I could take some vitamin C, lower my cortisol, then go in the float pod and meditate. Exactly. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.