DO THIS First Thing In The Morning To NEVER GET SICK Again! | Wim Hof & Lewis Howes

Everybody who is doing this is able to pass it on and get the same results we scientifically have achieved.

Amazing.

The autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, the immune system and the deepest part of the brain are now accessible at will for anybody who does this properly. If you go back, way back, I was born traumatically. I was one of the twins, identical twins. And they never knew there was another one. And I came almost too late, like blue, purple, in the cold of a whole way. That's where I came. And my mother was very religious, like naive, religious, strong as a woman, very strong. She made this invocation and she told me later, oh God, let this child live because they were to go to cut her open to get the baby out. And she was in fear about that. She was being pushed from the recovery room to the operation room. And in the hall, just before entering the rubber doors of the operation room, she just cut me out. With the words, oh God, let this child live. I will make him a missionary. Aria! The missionary. So I got a mission, but at that moment I was a fish in nothing.

Right.

Like purple. With that invocation, a mother has power.

Wow.

And naive or not, she can change the world there and she can make it hard and like a tattoo on your soul. And that's what happened.

Wow.

When did you start doing it?

I was always different than my identical twin brother.

He's still alive?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. And he's alive, but he's not able to do what I do because I do what I do because I had different experiences coming there from. Nate imprinted my soul, imprinted my type, my character. It was there.

Boom.

And always being different than him, but 100% genetically the same. So then they did all the studies on us and then they saw, yeah, it's genetically the same, but he's not able to do what he is able to do because of the training.

Wow. So if he did the training, would he be able to do it?

Yes, and he's doing it now, right?

Yeah, yeah, gotcha.

And he's healing a lot of people now.

Yeah.

And it's happening. And everybody who is doing this is able to pass it on and get the same results we scientifically have achieved.

Amazing.

The autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, the immune system, and the deepest part of the brain are now accessible at will for anybody who does this properly.

And when did you start getting into this? Was this some teen years or?

I think, you know, this is like a subcurrent within When I was 12, I was reading on psychology and Buddhism, and I was always a little bit strange looking for things out there. And wherever I go to get my hands upon, I was into it. And when I was 17, I already read so many books, so many religions, traditions, cultures, esoteric disciplines, yoga, kung fu, karate, Anything I could do, you know, I had done. And there I found the cold water.

Really?

In a morning, Sunday morning, thin layer on the ice, on the water, and looking around, I just undressed myself, went in, and I knew from the inside this is it.

Wow.

It connects you. And this is what you can't think about anything else. Exactly.

You have to think about that moment.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

But it matched my birth trauma. And this is what I later figured out. I was born in the cold of the hole, almost suffocated. Too long in the suffocate you. You get less oxygen. So the first thing you do when you go into the cold water is you begin to breathe deep. What do you do when you get born, when you take a deep breath?

You. You.

You go. You come with a inhale. You go with it. That's it. So the cold does the same. The cold brings you right there as like rebirthing. And I. I felt, you know, Beyond or deeper than thinking, you feel, oh, this is it. I felt power. I felt this connection which I had experienced at my birth. and at that time I was absolutely not aware of anything. But now I was aware that I had touched on something I was always looking for. And that made me feel.

What were you looking for?

That trauma to get a hold on that what was imprinted inside. And that made me The other day.

Come back and do it again.

Four months later, I was able to stay. And this is not for nobody. This is me for five to seven minutes under the water.

Holding the breath.

Holding the breath after 25 of these deep breaths. Because that all worked and it was great. You feel a great stillness. We're all doing it. It's like in the fetus position, I'm under the water, just on my own. And nobody around. And I had it always, just for my own. The trees were there, no leaves, but you know, it was my little place. Nobody could see it. And there I always trained. Every day, every winter. And at a certain moment, I began to separate the breathing and brought it home. And then I saw all the lights and all the chakras and oh, whatever they call in all these books, I saw it. And this time not because of reading, but because of doing it. Experience.

Being in it.

And that, yes.

And didn't you have an experience later in your life with where someone died in your life and you came back?

Oh, yes, that my wife When I was 35, with whom I had four children and still have, and I worked with them. You saw just two of them.

They're great.

She jumped from an age story down because of mental disorder.

Really?

So severe, I mean, like here, a year ago. Just kissing the kids goodbye first. Love was there, but the terror was also there. And she decided to jump and gosh. That can be life. That can be terror of life, in life. And a lot of people are suffering in this world. I at that moment was earning very little. Having four children, I was in the mountains at that present moment because making money through mountaineering and being a mountain guide and all. My kids were with the family in Spain, back in the country, and she did that.

Wow.

And that had, of course, such a great impact. It broke not only my heart, I was just shocked. you're shocked, you cannot think about it, you don't know what happened, but you have four children, so you take care of the children and you go on. But deeply you are broken. Down there I began very consciously going into the cold water, because at that moment from there on I had to deal with my own terror in my mind. My own worries, my own broken heart and it all influences your thinking brain every day. Every day. The cold makes your mind still. You cannot picnic, you cannot think about your worries or about your mortgage or anything.

You can't breathe, you have to focus.

Yeah, and so you are surviving and surviving is the same part as the emotion. the deep emotion. So that was the only way to still the influence, the emotion, creating all these bubbles in my head of the. And that's so the. My children made me survive. The cold healed me.

And now, how long did it take.

Until you said, yeah, oh, that took. I don't know, five to ten years.

Really? To heal the process, yeah.

To get it consciously to my mind. I think it took me like a month to get a hold of this anxiety inside, something like that. And then from there on, I just kept on doing it, of course. And I loved it as I did it before, but now it had is Absolute therapeutic power.

Had a purpose too, yeah.

Now look at this, Louis. Now we are, this happened in 1995, it's 2018. It's like 23 years ago and now I'm a dropout from school, but now I'm teaching the professors and the doctors in all the world that we have an ability to tap into the deepest part of the brain and solve all.

The matters.

Related to mental disorders and having no control. And there is no pill, no medicine involved. It's your own awareness, your own power. And then you get into the cold and the breathing and we skip the breathing and the cold at a certain moment. We get in our innate control By our mind, the way the establishment doesn't like it, but the way we should.

Have.

To confront ourselves with any stressor happening in the world to take care of our beloveds. Yeah.

Well, the establishment doesn't like it because it's not making them money if you sell.

That is the disease. That is the big disease though, a withholding. And I think making money, very nice, great. But I don't want pills, I don't want medicine, I want happiness, strength and health. If you are happy, how much money do you need? You see? How much cars do you need? How much of this? If you are happy, you are happy. So if you are able to regulate your own mood and we found the compelling evidence of the key components of the autonomous processes in the brain related to emotion itself, I want it out there. I want professors and doctors to prove me wrong, guys, because we got it approved already in the science, but now we are with the establishment. So the establishment is there, it's very nice. You can make bridges and big buildings and all that and shoot people to the moon. Let's begin and start guaranteeing happiness, strength and health, because it's there.

Boom.

Yeah.

There, your work and my work collide positively.

Absolutely, man. Can we do a three minute breathing exercise together where you just work with me, guide me and tell me what to do? And if someone's watching and if they only have three minutes a day to do some type of breathing exercise or a mindfulness exercise.

You can do it, you know, in four minutes?

Four minutes, okay.

You got a pushup exercise. This is what we do. And the push-up exercise vacuums the oxygen out of you. But first we're going to oxen energize. We're going to alkalize the muscle tissue. And thus, when the muscle tissue is alkalized, it is the right chemical environment for the performance neurotransmitter to keep on going. Just to show it to yourself. Besides of that you get deeply into the autonomic nervous system within four minutes. Do it.

Can we try it?

Yes.

Let's do it.

I'm gonna ask you to do push-ups.

Okay.

Without air in the lungs.

Without air in the lungs.

Yes.

And that is because before we are going to alkalize the blood and that goes into the muscle tissue and that will create the right chemical environment for the neural transfer performance to keep on going. And what's the matter? I'm not breathing, I've got no air in my self and I keep on going. What is that? That is the alchemist. Well, that's you. Within four minutes thus you get so fast in your biochemistry and you hold your breath, which is consciousness and thus the consciousness goes into the nervous system, into the depth thought of by science it's not possible. It's the autonomous nervous system. within four minutes.

Okay.

I think you have four minutes every day. And you know what? You're gonna feel great.

So what do I do first? Do we breathe first? Do we do push-ups first?

Do we- no, you know how many push-ups you normally do. Okay, keep that there. And now that is your baseline.

Okay.

And now we're gonna do more push-ups without breathing.

Is that possible?

Hey, be the alchemist. He's gonna show and you're gonna feel. Okay. Relax. Relax body is able to to store up oxygen. Four minutes.

Huh?

Four minutes.

We sit or stand for this. Does it matter?

Oh, yeah.

If you stand, you know, you can go directly into push-up exercise.

Okay.

As you wish. As you feel. Really? Okay, there you are. Pull here.

And let it go.

Pull here, let it go. Pull here, let it go. Get them up. Pull here, let it go. Keep on going. Pull here, let it go. Pull here, let it go. Pull here, let it go. Pull here, let it go. Have one thing in mind. You give the best, you get the best. There we are. Really? Lightheadedness, losing body, tingling, whatever you feel, make it stronger. Breathe into it. Okay, 90-18, we are energizing the body, alkalizing the body. How silty she is becomming out a life Don't gory. Forty go Forty F there go get it in get it.

Oh.

S No.

They go. One thing you ma Give it all, you get it all. Be a mean machine. You are the alchemist. Four.

Three, two.

One.

Here comes the last one. Put it in. Let it go. Stop.

Ango, no breathing.

Let's go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, go. 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, no and the locks. 20, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Whenever you feel the urge to breathe, you can take a man and keep on going.

35.

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Okay, 15. Right up.

Oh, man.

Well done. This is the way you get deeply into the autonomic nervous system. and re-regulating adrenal axis. It's all happening because he was not breathing and he became vacuumed within. Suddenly you gotta survive. What a thing we never do. And it's good for you. You feel. Hey, you tell what you feel. Easy does it. Easy does it.

Well done. Well done.

Well done. Well done.

Oh man, I wish I didn't do chest this morning, but I did a full like chest this morning.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

But it feels good, yeah.

Yeah.

I was feeling like tingly and lightheaded doing it. Yeah. But then I felt like I had a lot of energy when I was, when I breathed all the way out. When I was pushing, I felt like I had a lot of energy.

That's it, that's it, that's it. That's the alkalinity in the muscle tissue and the performance neurotransmitter acetylcholine. is able to go. And normally when it becomes sore, Acetyl-L-Carnitine is not able to go anymore. And this could be also for football or any tishion.

Sure. Do you recommend people do that four minute exercise every day?

Yes.

Yes. Where they do.

Everybody has four minutes.

No excuse.

Should they do the exercise with push-ups or just the breathing?

No, no, with push-ups a lot better because you get the shit out of your system.

Really? Yeah, I'm like sweating, detoxifying it. Yeah.

And you are, the adrenal axis is on and that resets the body.

Yeah.

And that means you get into this natural biochemical state.

It's like a high. Right on.

Yes.

First thing I do every single morning is I go and freeze in cold water and I've shared this with many people. It's not because I'm a masochist. But because it moves the length of your body, as you well know. And when you jump in, it never feels good to go in, but getting out you feel incredible. But I do it for a different reason. I do it to train my brain to say, when I say now, it means now. When I say go, we go. I don't stand there because it's cold and go maybe in a minute when I'm ready. And I think I've shared with you before, I don't think I've ever had a morning, I look forward to jumping in that water ever. But I always do it because I've trained my brain, this is how we work. And if you train your brain to do that every single day, then it'll do it on the more difficult and important important things in life. But I also then I do my priming, I think you're familiar with, which is I do 10 minutes and I pick 10 minutes because if I said do 20 minutes or 30, oh, I don't have time. But if you don't have 10 minutes for your life, you don't have much of a life. So I do this 10 minute process and if people want to know it rather than walk through it right now, they can go to TonyRobbins.com/priming. There's a video, it's free. But the essence of it is I change my body radically and I do three things to make sure that my brain is primed. And what I mean by primed is Most people think their thoughts are their thoughts, Louis, and you and I know better because you and I have read the studies, right? Priming is a psychological principle where you think thoughts and you think they're yours, but very often they're created by the environment. So one example was Harvard has done multiple studies on this. And one of the studies they did was taking people, walking up to people, they hired two actors, they walked up to a hundred people, they had to do the exact same thing, men and women, and what they did is they'd walk up with a cup of coffee in their hand and they'd look at you and go, here, would you hold.

This for a second?

And then they'd look down and reach in their pocket to pull out their phone. And most people then take the coffee. There's nobody there, you're not looking to give it back, right? And then they do what they do on the phone, they put it back in, they go, thank you so much. And they take their coffee back and they walk away. But then about 20 minutes later, if you're in a mall or a school campus or whatever, A person comes by with a clipboard and they give you $20 and they say, Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but if you'll give me 30 seconds of your time, the $20 is yours. I need you to read two minutes of this, literally this little story, and then just answer three questions for it. Here's the interesting part. Half the people have a reaction more than 80%, and half have a reaction 80% difference, and here's the question. They read the same story. But half the people are handed hot coffee, half the people are handed iced coffee. And the question they ask is, how would you describe the main character of the story? After they read a few paragraphs, and the people who are handed hot coffee say the person is warm and genuine, 81% of the people, 79 to 80, 79.8, it's almost, it's a 1% difference, you know, natural variability, who are given the iced coffee say the person is cold and uncaring. I could tell you 20 studies like that that would blow your mind how your brain is conditioned or primed by the environment. And think about all that's gone on with COVID over the last two years and how many people's brains live in fear. And in my new health book I put in there just to remind people with COVID outside being 80 years old, the number one or having four or five comorbidities, the number one factor, 80% of people die of COVID 79.8%. are obese. That's something you can do something about. The second factor, according to the CDC, is fear. Because anxiety makes people get short of breath, they freak out, and their whole nervous system starts to go shut down. Your immune system can be shut down just by fear alone. And so this experience of life that we have, most people just don't understand that you are being primed all the time. And unless you prime yourself, you're gonna be primed by the environment, which most people understand that your brain right now is being conditioned and triggered whether you know it or not. If you're in any social network, it's being done continuously by algorithms. So I want to take control of my brain. So I do three quick things. One, I take three minutes of those 10 minutes after I've changed my body and I focus on three different events in my life that I'm grateful for. I usually pick two big ones and one small one. It could be as simple as a smile on my daughter's face, the wind against my skin. But I really, I don't like, if you've ever been on a roller coaster and you remember the roller coaster over there, it's not the same as remember going over over the edge like you're there. So I do it in an associated way and it changes your biochemistry. Now it sounds pretty, you know, positive thinky, I'm going to be grateful, but there's a value to it because the two emotions that mess up your business, your life, your relationships are anger and fear. And you can't be angry and grateful simultaneously and you can't be fearful and grateful simultaneously. So by starting my day with that, and it's not some fake pump up positive thinking, the real experiences, So it literally teaches your body to go in that state because otherwise the environment we're in right now, there's a whole lot of uncertainty and fear. Then real fast, I do this three minute process that's kind of like a blessing. And then three minutes, the last three minutes are called three to thrive, where I focus on three things I want to accomplish, but instead of thinking I want to accomplish, I see, feel and experience it is done. I feel grateful, I celebrate it, and it trains your brain. So in 10 minutes, I'm done. Third thing that I'll do, I immediately send a message or a text or an audio message to somebody as a sincere compliment. And I don't go, Dude, great job, or Wow, you're cool. I say, Listen, I saw you on Tuesday with those kids, and I saw you take that extra 20 minutes no one else did. I just want you to know, I saw that, I thought that was incredible. So I'm always very specific so they know it's not just some positive thinking bull call, it's sincerely doing it. It makes me constantly look for the good in the people I work with. Fourth thing I do is whatever I don't want to do, the most challenging part of the day. I want to go handle that problem, I want to handle that issue, because after you do that, everything has momentum. So those four are my core. Now my workouts, what I've done to be able to have more energy and vitality and strength, I just finished a book called Life Force. It's been three years on it, and in there I give all the details of what to do depending upon what your goals are and what your direction is, stage of life, Are you looking for more energy or more strength? Are you looking to extend the quality of your life? Are you dealing with a real disease? And you know, I did Money Master the Game and I interviewed at the time 50 of the smartest people in the world financially, Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett, et cetera. This time I interviewed 167 Nobel laureates, scientists, and the greatest regenerative doctors on the face of the earth. So there's nothing in here that's my opinion. It is all science and it's stuff that you would think would happen 20 or 30 years in the future that's happening either right now or the things are coming in the next 12 to 36 months that the FDA is currently looking at for approval. I wanted to ask you a follow.

Up to one thing you mentioned there, which I think a lot of people don't do, which I think you do incredibly well. I've seen you do this many times. You mentioned you reach out to someone, you'll text someone, you'll send a voice note or a video message, or maybe you're calling them or just saying hi to them and telling them you're acknowledging something that they're doing well that you appreciate. I don't think that many people do this. Why is this so important for you personally? And why do you think this would help so many people get out of themselves and overcome anxiety and stress if they did this even a couple of times a week? I know you do this every day, but just a couple texts a week. Why was this so valuable for people?

Well, number one, I love people, so I love to sincere. If you just call someone to make a compliment and it's not sincere, anybody can feel that. I don't do that. You know, it's like I pride myself on finding the goodness in people or the skill sets in people. And I also know that what is acknowledged tends to grow. So from standpoint of that, I want them to feel that feeling of being appreciated. I want them to know I see what's happening behind the camera, so to speak. You know, it's like that's what matters. It's not how everybody else sees you. It's how you really are. And then it also deepens every relationship you have when you sincerely acknowledge somebody and you notice something other people don't notice. And so it deepens the connection. And to me, quality of life is a quality of two things, your emotions and your relationships. And if my emotions are terrible, my relationships are going to be terrible. But if I have great emotions and I can extend that out to help other people, then it just makes me feel more alive. So I do it for me and them. It's a virtuous cycle.

Right, yeah.

And I think if someone's feeling stressed, the easiest way to overcome that is do what you said, which is, focus on the things you're grateful for and get out of yourself and start acknowledging someone else and you'll build that deeper relationship and feel better in the process.

Now you've got positive momentum energy, now you attack the most difficult thing of your day and when you make that your habit, the most difficult thing gets smaller and smaller because you're feeling stronger and stronger, right? And then you have momentum and so now you'll attack the next difficult thing and it doesn't even feel difficult at that point. the whole secret is most of us don't realize, depending on which research you buy into, somewhere between 45 and 55% of what we do is habitual. And the great thing about habit is you don't have to think. So I don't know about you, but the first time I tried to drive a stick shift car when I was a little kid, it's like, I'm supposed to do this, this, this, watch the rear view mirror and the, ah, it's too much. But once you learn it, most of driving 99% of it's habits, so now your brain is free to do other things. That's the value of making something habitual. The weakness of making it habitual you don't grow, right? The weakness making habituals, you don't feel fully alive. So it's like you've got to find that balance in your life. But if you can create habits that make you do the right things for your mind, your body, your emotion, and for others, then let those take over. Then it becomes, it's like working out. You and I both are workout nuts. And it's like in the early days, it's hard to work out at this stage of my life or yours. If you didn't work out, I don't work out on my bed as you'd be pissed off and frustrated, right? You need to work out. It's a part of who you are now.

Get more sunlight during the day. Get more sunlight during the day. So tell me about why is it important to have sunlight.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So first thing to understand is that serotonin, right? Serotonin is a neurotransmitter and it's supposed to be like a feel-good kind of compound. This is why so many antidepressant medications, they're serotonin reuptake inhibitors. to help keep serotonin active in your system longer. Here's what's so cool is that serotonin gets converted into melatonin. And we already talked about how important this is. It's the anti- precursor. It's a precursor to that. Right, right, right. And so, exposure to sunlight boosts your serotonin immediately. But also, exposure to sunlight helps to set your cortisol rhythm. So cortisol is, it's been getting a pretty bad name in the media lately because it's like, glorified stress hormone. We've got like 50 hormones and cortisol is the only bad guy now. But cortisol is incredibly important and valuable. It's just when it's out of balance. It can become a problem. And so sunlight is clinically proven. I cited one of the studies in the book to help to normalize your cortisol rhythm. So it helps to keep your cortisol lower in the evening if you get sunlight during the day, which will elevate your cortisol. Okay, in cortisol and melatonin have basically an inverse relationship. So when cortisol is high, melatonin is low. When melatonin is high, cortisol is low. So it helps to get that on track again. And it's not like rocket science, you know? Like we know that sunlight is valuable to human health, but we've been dissuaded in the media because of, you know, photoaging of the skin and skin care and things like that. And I actually talk about in the book and kind of demystify to find some of that. Because then we get into conversation about UVA and UVB and all this stuff. But bottom line, make sure you're getting some exposure to sunlight every day. It's going to help you sleep better at night. And this can also be through your photo receptor, so through your eyes as well. And just getting light in the room, natural sunlight, you know, every day. And that's going to help to kind.

Of set your circadian. What if in Chicago in the winter, there's no sunlight for, or St. Louis.

And there's no sunlight for three months? Check this out. So, and I do recommend, and I share some hacks, right? There are light boxes that are used clinically to help to address things like seasonal affective disorder.

Okay. Right.

There are earbuds that shoot light through your ear canal, right? There's visors you can wear and they're clinically proven to be effective.

Till sunbathing in a tanning salon or no.

That actually does work. If it's the right time. So you need more UVB actually. and really depending on where you are in the world, pretty much the United States period is not getting UVB at certain times of the year. All right, so we want to be proactive with this, but understand it's not just the exposure on your skin is what I'm talking about. Your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light, but just the exposure in your room. All right, so making sure you have an office with windows, access to windows. There was another study done, this is crazy, because some people work in like a Cubicle dungeon.

Dungeon, yeah.

You know, and what they found was that office workers who were not exposed to windows actually got 173% less exposure to natural light and they ended up sleeping 46 minutes less every night as a result of that. And they saw this correlation, which was so interesting. And they reported more physical ailments, less energy, and also a higher propensity towards diseases.

Wow.

Right? So this is super important and even getting some exposure to sunlight on an overcast day is like 50 times more valuable than any fancy light you can get exposed to. But those things are great hacks for sure. There's so many things there.

Of course. Okay, that was the first one. The second one, avoid screens before bedtime. And I think this is probably something that a lot of us are at a fault with.

I know you're kissing that phone goodnight before bed.

Of course.

Yeah, you know, I always tell myself like, okay, shutting it off. by a certain time and like not having it in the room and all these other things, but it's a challenge, man. It's definitely a challenge.

Here's why, dude. Like this is in with this book, I was able to dissect that because I knew that that would be the toughest one of the 21 strategies. This one is the toughest because we're addicted. We are in fact addicted. Here's why, here's what's happening. So there's this interesting compound called dopamine, right? And it was once thought that dopamine was related to pleasure, but it's not. Dopamine is all about seeking. It's driving you to seek, right? And so the internet is perfect for this because there's infinite seeking. Instagram is perfect for this because you're continuously going and just there's more to see. But every time you find, you get a little hit from your opioid system. So it's like a slow drip of drugs. I seek, I find, I seek, I find. And you get looped in and it's very difficult to break that pattern. And everybody's had this happen where you're like, I'm gonna check my Instagram for a minute. I'll check Twitter for a minute.

Right.

And then it's 30 minutes later, an hour later, and you're still scrolling. This is what's going on. Like our brain is hardwired to get addicted to stuff like this. And these awesome social media apps know how to manipulate our mind and to take advantage of that. So this is a call to take your brain back. I'm not saying I love this stuff. I absolutely love it, but it has a place and it's being more aware. Now that you're aware, you can catch yourself. and break the pattern. So here's why it's an issue at night in particular. So there was a study done at Rinsler Polytechnic that found that just two hours of your device usage before bed was enough to suppress melatonin secretion. All right. So again, you can pass out just being on it two hours before, you know, like that span. And so you can go to sleep or pass out, but that doesn't mean you're getting that rejuvenative sleep. So this is why a lot of people are sleeping eight hours, but they're still tired when they wake up in the morning because melatonin is suppressed because they're on their device right. before bed. And it's this blue spectrum of light that's shooting out, kind of pouring into your optical system.

What if you can stop that spectrum?

Is there shades?

Is there screen protectors? Is there glasses?

There's all of those things.

Now is that okay then if you have the battery on it?

It's a hack.

It's not the optimal, but it's the better than.

Yes. So absolutely, everybody today can get Flux F F.L.U.X.

Sorry.

F.L.U.X. Which basically cools off your screen, you know, pulls off that troublesome. Of course. So I've got all my different.

I want to see what it looks like or is it just a film that goes over the top?

Yeah, so it's a cool app. It does this automatically.

It's an app. Yeah.

So you just download it on your phone.

Yeah.

And it does this automatically based on your time zone. Oh, wow. And the time of year, all that stuff. Amazing. So it pulls out that most troublesome spectrum of light. Harvard researchers found that it's not just light exposure, it's the color and it's the luminance. It's the, the strength of the light. Yes. You know, so green light was, like, three times less impactful to your sleep than blue light in their studies. Wow. So cool stuff like that. So flux, you can get the blue blocking glasses. Basically, they're like sunglasses. Use those, too, with the orange tint. Yeah, I do.

Yeah.

I've got cool TV or something.

Yeah.

You know, like, if you're gonna stay up late and watch movie a little bit later, you know, but the whole thing is to not make that a habit because these are, of course, you know, these are hacks. But the best thing is, and this is so important, especially for, for, for our audiences, you know, who are really about taking their life to the next level. And they're missing out on this key component, which is you have to find something that's of greater or equal value to the device. So people, you know, actually connecting with.

Real people, you know, something like that.

Yeah.

Playing games with your kids, talking to your family, have sex. There's other things that you can do.

Sleep well.

Yeah, I talk about that in the book too, but you have to find something that fills you up because that addiction is so strong and that's really the best tool, which is to avoid the screens in the first place.

Yeah, okay, that's number two. Number three, have a caffeine curfew. So what time, I mean, here's the thing, I feel like I don't have that much caffeine and I almost never drink coffee except for about a month ago I started doing some intermittent fasting testing until I have Bulletproof in the morning. It's like, what time is it? It's almost two o'clock. I still haven't eaten today. And, but before, you know, if I'd have like a cappuccino after dinner or something, it would never affect me. Like I never felt like, oh, I'm wired now. Like I could always fall asleep, but I'm assuming that it still does something to my brain or my body, even in my system, to not allow me to fully rest. So what is the optimal time to How many hours before you sleep should we not have any caffeine?

Got it. And by the way, the hours before with the screen time, 60 to 90 minutes, that's all I recommend. So with the caffeine thing, you just set it perfectly. You can definitely go to sleep, but your nervous system can still be active because caffeine has something called. It's blocking you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It has a half-life of about eight hours. So if you have 200 milligrams of caffeine, eight hours later, 100 is still active in your system.

Wow.

And so this can keep you out of normal stages of REM sleep. and deep sleep. All right, so you can be physiologically laying down and think that you're getting eight hours sleep. And so this study that was done, they gave people caffeine right before bed, three hours before bed, and six hours before bed. And they found that even six hours out was enough to have noticeable. And they use, like, monitoring systems, you know, measuring their brain waves to find out that, whoa, their sleep is actually getting interrupted because of the caffeine. And then there was the Subjective, so there's objective and subjective parts of this test and people thought like hey, I got enough sleep, like I feel great, but in actuality their body was lacking that rejuvenative sleep and what that does is you have this false sense of being well rested and you automatically unknowingly start using more caffeine at some point during the day because you're gonna have more daytime sleepiness, alright? So and that creates that whole vicious circle with caffeine to keep you going.

Sure.

Okay, so how many hours before? I recommend, and I'm a fan of caffeine, right? Just do it in the morning. Do it in the early part of the day. It depends on how sensitive you are. Before noon, by the way, too. Yeah. Before noon, real world would be ideal, you know? But some people are hypersensitive to caffeine. Everybody's metabolism is different.

Some people might need to lay off of it completely, but that's a whole nother, whole nother book on how to, how to make sure, sure, sure. Okay, so no caffeine afternoon. This is my fourth one that I see here that I like. This is one of my favorites that I was doing that I needed before I learned about the power and importance of sleep and that's be cool. I remember growing up in Ohio, my dad, we did not have air conditioning in our house and my dad was just like, well, I don't want to spend the money on this and it's only two months in the summer where you got to deal with it. St. Louis is the same as Ohio. Yes. And man, it was miserable. Because I couldn't wear sheets or anything. I'd just be laying there sweating with the fan on and my dad would make me turn the fan down because he didn't want me to get whatever. I don't know. And so it was just misery and I couldn't sleep. I'm up all night. And I wish my dad would have read this book again. So you gotta understand the importance of being cool. But what does it mean to be cool?

What's the optimal coolness that you should be in or does it matter? Yeah, absolutely man. And my story is very similar with yours. My bedroom was upstairs. It's on top of the freaking house. You know, heat rises. Oh, coolness drops. So that's why our basements tend to be cooler. Upstairs, I would literally see those heat waves. Oh my gosh. Walking up there, 100 degree St. Louis weather. And so I would spray myself with a water bottle and then lay there butt naked. It's butt naked. It hope my brother doesn't come in the room, you know, when I'm trying to sleep. But yeah, man, it's not good sleep. No.

And so this is really simple.

You know, your body goes through a process. It's something called thermal regulation. And it does this every night, and we'll just say around 9 p.m. average. It does this process to lower your core body temperature to create the ideal environment for deep sleep. Your body cools you off to sleep better. So you want to support it and not work against it. So some simple tips, and it's going to sound a little frosty to some people, but ideally your room temperature is going to be, and this is according to research, what experts say, 62 degrees to 68 degrees for sleeping.

Wow.

And some people are like, no way! Like my wife is actually she's from Kenya. So hot climate, no she's not having that. So I find a happy medium.

You're at the top, you're in 68-69.

Like 69, you know. And also, our friend Kelly Starrett, Dr. Kelly Starrett, he had a pretty big struggle with this, with being too hot. And he got it cold in the room, but it still wasn't enough and he didn't want his wife to suffer. So he got something called a chili pad. which basically sits on your side of the bed and he's like he swears by it. Underneath the mattress or underneath the sheet.

Right on top of the mattress.

Yeah, right. Exactly. But it just keeps you cool underneath you.

Yeah.

It has been a game changer for him, you know, so just cooling your body temperature.

Yeah. Even just one degree difference is huge. It's huge. It's huge.

Okay, cool.

So be cool at night. Doesn't mean you can still, you know, you can still wrap yourself in a blanket. But you can't make the room cool. Yeah. Gotcha. I like that. Okay, so that was number four. Number five, let's do is get to bed at the right time. So why is it important to be at the right time? Should we be at the right same time every night? And what is that optimal time?

Good, good question, man. So timing your sleep is like timing an investment. If you invest a lot at the wrong time, you're gonna get pain. But if you invest even a little bit at the right time, you get some big rewards. And so according to research, our money time sleep is between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. And why that is, is that this is when you're going to get your greatest increase of melatonin, which is going to help you to go through your normal sleep cycle and the greatest secretion of things like human growth hormone as well. So more recovery, more anabolic growth and development.

Between 10 and 2 a.m. That's right. Yeah. Is when you should be going to.

Sleep or that's when you get that optimal sleep.

Right.

If you can get some sleep in that window and some experts say that it's like twice as much value per hour.

Wow.

Right.

So if you go to bed at 9:30, 9:45 and you're asleep in that window that whole time, that's the optimal time section. Yeah.

People will notice this when they tend to get to bed a little bit earlier, they're just like, wow, I slept really great.

Right.

You know, I see your face and like, yeah, when that happens, but it rarely happens. you know? And so that's the kind of money time window, but it's not again, it's not about being perfect. If this doesn't fit your lifestyle, stack the other conditions, do the other things, you know? Because the timing does matter because your body's wired up to work with nature, you know? And only recently can we basically manufacture a second daytime, you know? And our systems, our genes are expecting a night cycle for us to get cozy, to get sleep, but we can throw on the, you know, do the laptop lap dance all night long today, you know, watch YouTube videos and Netflix and be on our social media, but our genes are not different from our ancestors even, you know, 100 years ago.

How does food affect our brain? Well, I wrote a book about 13 years ago called the UltraMind Solution about how the body affects the mind. We often know about the mind-body effect, which is real, but there's also the other direction going on. And it turns out that food is probably the biggest driver of dysfunction in the brain when it comes to mood, behavior, attention, memory. And this is not just sort of hypothetical, but there's a whole department, for example, at Harvard of nutritional psychiatry. There's a whole department at Stanford of metabolic psychiatry. I've had both of them on my podcast, the Doctors Pharmacy. the doctors from those institutions are talking about the role of food and the brain and mood. And we see depression, anxiety, irritability, stress. It turns out that when you eat the American diet, otherwise known as the SAD diet, the standard American diet, that people are damaging their brains in ways that create inflammation in the brain. And we now know that mental illness often is an inflamed brain. When you cut yourself and you get an infection, it's red and hot and sore and inflamed. If you sprain your ankle, it's sore. If you get a sore throat, it's sore and red. When your brain is inflamed, it doesn't hurt. The only way your brain knows how to say ouch is by getting depressed or anxious or angry or irritable or having even more serious consequences. And so, the food that we're eating, particularly the sugar and starch and processed ingredients, additives, the lack of good fats, the predominance of bad fats and refined oils, the nutrient depletion of our diet. I mean, 95 of us are deficient, probably in Omega-3 fats. You know, 90 plus percent of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiency, which all play a role in mood like folate, magnesium is incredible for anxiety, iron, zinc, all these vitamin D, all these play a role in the brain function. I mean, you hear about winter blues. that's because of lack of vitamin D. So we know about this intimate connection between food and mood and nutritional status and mood. And the clinical trials have been really staggering showing that people who eat a whole foods diet and get rid of the junk actually can get rid of depression. I see panic attacks, anxiety disorders, often caused by the food we're eating. Just an example, when you eat sugar or starch, your cortisol level goes up, which is the stress hormone, your adrenaline goes up. So if you eat a bagel or a cookie, your body literally has the same reaction as if you're running from a saber-toothed tiger. Wow.

And, and that, and that can create.

Anxiety internally with the insulin.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you could be totally fine and calm and take five deep breaths before your meal, but if you eat all that crap, your brain is going to feel it.

Your, your body's going to feel it. So what happens to the brain when the, when your eating a bagel or an ice cream cone or whatever it is, and it goes into your gut, does it send signals to your brain and then it starts to, you know.

What does that do?

Is it inflaming in that moment? Does it take time to inflame something?

Yeah. So there's a whole cascade of things that happens when you eat mostly the starch and sugar, that's 60% of our diet, right? It's ultra-processed food. It's the main ingredients of corn and flour and sugar that are in everything.

Everything.

And what happens is you get this spike in blood sugar, which then creates a spike in insulin. At the same time, you get an immediate spike in cortisol and adrenaline. That's the first phase of response. Of course, it affects your liver and screws up your cholesterol and all that. But what happens next is even more concerning. It drives all the available fuel in your bloodstream from all the food you've eaten, sugar and starch and whatever bad fats, drives it into your fat cells. and it's a one-way street into your fat cells called your adipocytes around your belly, those belly fat cells. Those fat cells in turn create a whole series of chemicals, hundreds of chemicals, hormones, inflammatory markers and messengers, neurotransmitters. It's quite striking when you look at they're not just like holding up your pants, it's fat there, it's like it's actually doing stuff. And when you eat in that way, it drives hunger, it stores fat, it shuts down your metabolism, and it literally slows your metabolism. And even worse, it locks the fat cells so that fat can't get out. It's like a one-way turnstile. I won't get in. And then on top of that, it releases all these inflammatory messenger molecules. We call them adipocytokines. They go to your brain and they create inflammation in the brain. So it's a kind of a downstream effect over chronic eating this way. If you have one cookie or one bagel, it's not gonna kill you, right? But if you're constantly eating this stuff. And we're talking about the average American eats a pound almost of flour and sugar a day. Wow. A pound, like 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour. You add that up and it's, and I know I'm not that eating that much and you aren't. So a lot of people are making up for the difference. Right, right.

So food affects your mood for sure.

Yeah.

And then, not even that, it's not even just, you know, it was striking. And I don't know if you had David Perlmutter on the show, but he wrote a book called Brainwash and it really speaks to what happens to the brain when you don't eat real whole foods and you eat too much of this American diet that we're all eating. It disconnects the frontal lobe from the amygdala. Now, what does that mean in English? The frontal lobe is a grown-up. It's the adult in the room. It's like you think you're gonna punch that guy but you go, I better not punch that guy. Right? It's that adult in the room that sort of is your higher self. And the amygdala is your reptile brain. It's your lizard brain. It's going to just run or fight or flee. And it's.

And.

And what happens is literally physiologically, these parts of the brain are connected, but when you eat crap, they get disconnected. And so you're constantly reacting from your amygdala with no grown-up in the room, which is why we see this level of divisiveness and hatred and, I mean, just all the. upheaval we're seeing in society now. I think a large part of that has to do with our brains being constantly triggered by this reptilian insult that is driving behavior change. And when we look at the fact of other data to support, it's not just a theory. In prisons, if you give prisoners healthy food, swapping out all the crap they eat in prisons, which is pretty darn bad, there's a 56% reduction in violent crime in the prisons. If you add a multivitamin, it's an 80% reduction.

Come on.

If you look at kids, and this is in juvenile detention centers, they've done clinical trials, because they've got these people locked up. So it's a really great kind of study. Now, these kind of studies are hard to do, because mostly we're free, we call them free living humans, who don't really behave and they'll do whatever they want, they don't follow the study protocol.

When you're locked up, you get what you get, right?

And so they took these kids. The environment's the same for everyone, yeah, all that stuff. That's right. And they took these kids, and they, these were kids who were disruptive, violent, aggressive, oppositional, suicidal. By cleaning up their diet and giving them whole foods, it was a 91% reduction in all violent behavior. Oppositional behavior, need for restraints went down, suicide went down 100%. I mean, it's the third leading cause of death in that age group. It went down 100%, no suicides. And so you see this incredible data that comes from understanding nutritional psychiatry. And you go, wait a minute, maybe some of our messed up society has to do with not only the problems with obesity and the problems with chronic disease and the fact that COVID is landed on a perfect laboratory for spreading in America because we're all so unhealthy and our immune systems are so sick because of our diet. But it's also led to this incredible disruption of our brain and our mood and our behavior, which we're seeing at rampant in society today.

What would you say are the three foods we should all stay away from in order to increase the happiness of our mental health.

Oh, that's not hard. So, I mean, you know, in my book, the Pegan Diet, it's called 21 Practical Principles for Reclaiming youg Health in a Nutritionally Confusing World. And, and it's really practical. And there's a bunch of steps at the end. But, but I think, you know, the, the real dangers are one, high fructose corn syrup, because anything with high fructose corn syrup almost by definition is a highly processed food. It comes with all kinds of other brad craps. So if you're reading labels, like if you just can eliminate that, that would be like number one. Number two would be trans fats, hydrogenated fats, which.

What is that, what's that in? What foods is that in?

Is that processed packaged food?

What, hydrogenated fats?

Is that fried food? Is that french fries? Yeah, what's that? So hydronating frats have literally been banned by the FDA essentially ruled not safe to eat, but they're still out there, okay? You can still find them, it's less, and they used to be really, it makes Crisco shortening. So anything that comes with a baked good or any processed food. And the third thing would be, you should only eat foods with ingredients that you would have in your cupboard can pronounce and recognize. In other words, would you have butylated hydroxytoluene in your cupboard that you sprinkle on your salad?

No.

Which is also known as BHT. preservative that's been linked to cancer. It's banned in Europe. We have it in everything here. So, if you wouldn't have azodicarbonamide in your cupboard that you would use in your stir fries, you probably shouldn't eat it. And yet, this is in so much of our foods. In fact, in America, it's legal. This is an ingredient used in breads to make them fluffier. Subway used it in their Subway sandwiches. Did they have to take it out? Did they have to varietal it? Yeah, yeah. So, our friend, our friend, shamed them into taking it out. But, it's still legal here. It's not illegal. she just shamed them publicly by trying to eat her yoga mat in front of the subway and got them. But in Singapore, for example, if you're a food manufacturer and you use this ingredient in your food, you get a 15-year jail sentence and a $450,000 fine.

No, you do not.

Yes, you do. I swear to God. In Europe, a lot of these chemicals are banned. So basically, just eat real food. So get rid of all those three things that would make you likely to end up in trouble. and then there's another hierarchy of how do you even upgrade the quality. But the whole principle of the Pegan diet is that one, food is medicine. Food is medicine and quality matters. And it's not just calories, it's information. And it literally can upgrade or downgrade your biology with every bite. And so when you're putting something in your mouth, you're literally speaking to your genes, you're speaking to your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome, your mitochondria, everything is controlled by what we're eating. So, the book is really focused on two key principles. One is food is medicine and the other is personalized nutrition and medicine. Because, you know, I call the Pegan Diet as a joke between paleo and keto, right? Sure. You know, and I was sitting on a panel with a friend of mine who was a vegan cardiologist and another one was a paleo doc and they were just fighting. And I was in the middle and I felt like a ping pong ball going back and forth. and I was sort of, I was, like, trying to break the, break the tension a little bit. And I said, hey, if you're a paleo and you're vegan, I must be Pegan. And it was kind of a joke. And everybody laughed. I was like, oh, wow, that was good. And then I thought about on the way home. And basically they're identical except for where you get your protein, animals or grains and beans. They both agree that we should whole Foods. They both agree we should lots of vegetables and nuts and seeds and good fats and get ready to process foods and low sugar. and even agree that we should not.

Be eating dairy, which is a whole.

Controversial subject, but they're pretty identical. And so the goal of this book is not to create a dogma, but to create a Big 10 inclusive framework for people to think about food in a different way. So what are the principles of healthy eating that are adaptable to different cultures, different preferences, different belief systems? And I think, you know, I always encourage people to listen to their body, not to dogma. You know, a lot of our nutrition advice is based on, oh, be keto or be paleo or be vegan or be this or be that be raw. And the truth is, it depends on you. If you are, if I do keto, my body doesn't respond great. I mean, I do a higher fat, but, but, right. But another person who's a diabetic, they might do great on it.

Right.

You know, one person on a vegan diet, like Rich Roll, may be able to run triathlons. I mean, you know, just incredible Iron Man stunts of heroic effort. But he may be a unicorn, or maybe he's figured out how to do it. And another patients of mine see are extremely ill after years of being a vegan because of their nutrition depleted or they don't have protein in their body. Their body doesn't like it. I just had a patient, for example, this week, who was a young woman, 26 years old, who's been a vegetarian vegan. She's basically a vegetable and sugar vegan, and she didn't even like to. So she would eat sugar as well.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of people who are vegan eat sugar because it's. It's. The body starts to Crave the carbohydrates. sugar. So it's not uncommon. And so she wasn't overweight at all but metabolically she was super unhealthy. She had acne and her gut was a mess and she had very low protein, very, very low amino acid. She had very low vitamin D, extremely low B12, very low iodine, very low zinc. She was extremely unwell and her diet was just so not fit for her. so we've had to sort of upregulate it and change it a little bit. I had to get her on some different protein shakes which she needed. I had to upgrade her vitamins. I had to sort of get her off the sugar. I mean, but I think, you know, it takes a lot of work. So the key is how do you personalize the diet and get away from the basically religious nutrition that we have.

Which is either all vegan, vegetarian, keto, carnivore, there's all these extreme diets.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And again, I only encourage people to listen to the smartest doctor in the room, which is their own body.

Theirself, right? Yeah.

Like, how do you feel? Do you feel great? Do you feel bad? How's your stomach? How are you clear? You have energy? I mean, what is happening to you? So, I think it's important to understand that we are all different and that the future of medicine is personalized medicine. There's a whole section here on personalized nutrition and how do you identify your particular needs by various kinds of testing, whether it's genetic testing, whether it's metabolic testing, food sensitivity testing, and how do you actually figure out how to dial.

In your perfect diet? Everyone's kind of swearing by their way is the way, but it seems so extreme in my mind, you know? And I, yeah, and I, I empathize with vegans, and I'm like, yeah, I don't want to hurt animals either. And, you know, but then I've tried it for a while, and I'm also like, gosh, but I miss meats. And it's like, yeah, yeah. What is the way?

And what I'm hearing you say is that there is not one size fits all. You have to really figure out what works for you. Yeah. the one size that fits all is quality, is understanding food is information. Just meat, for example. So feedlot meat is an abomination. It's horribly cruel to the animals. It grows the animals in ways that are extremely destructive to the environment by these monocrop corn and soy fields we use to grow feed, the feedlots that produce tremendous amounts of pollution, all the hormones and antibiotics that we use, and the quality of the meat is very different. And the, you know, so it's basically bad for you, bad for the planet, bad for the animals. So they should be banned 100%.

What would you say are the, the, the three things you, you would keep doing for as long as you could to help you with anti-aging and living longer and staying, would it be the peptides, would be something else?

I, I listen, I think it's like those are, those are like, there's the 80 and that's the 20. so that's the 20 is all that fancy stuff. And the 80 is food, your food and fit exercise. And I've been doing more strength training and I've been doing more cardio and and I think, you know, sleep and meditation. And then the other thing that people often don't think about for longevity is community love. Because love is medicine, just like food is medicine. Absolutely. And if you stress in your heart, you're going to die.

Yeah. I mean, it's going to make you sick.

It's really true. And what's really striking is when you look at the data, Some of the most potent predictors of longevity is not your diet actually, it's whether you are socially connected. So if you're part of a knitting club or a bridge club or a bowling club, like the longevity numbers just go crazy. And there's a great study that was done years ago in a little town called, I think it's called Rosario, what was it? Rose something, Pennsylvania. And it was basically in a community of Italians from this one little village in Italy that all kind of moved over to this one town years and years ago. And they kind of left their old Italian diet behind and adopted the American diet. But this community was so tightly knit and they're all different economic spectrums in the community, but they were always there for each other. They were at birthdays and parties and holidays. There was a sense of of connective connection and love in the community. It was really unique. And what was striking is even though they adopted all the American lifestyle habits, they didn't get the same mortality as the rest of Americans because they had this incredible social fabric that was providing them a foundation of love and connection and meaning and purpose. And what's striking is I just saw an article even one of the major medical journals, the Journal of the American Medical Association, that was striking to me because it was so clear that meaning and purpose are also predictive of longevity. So, if you have no meaning and purpose in your life... What's the point of being here? I might as well end up in a nursing home.

Right, you kind of have nothing to live for, right?

So, I think it's really quite interesting and I think we're in this moment where we're learning so much about medicine and well-being and health and we are in a massive paradigm shift. That's what functional medicine is. That's what this book is about the Pegan diet. It's really a functional medicine view on food and nutrition and health and longevity.

You talked about insulin resistance as one of the leading causes of chronic disease today. What is insulin resistance? How do we prevent it? And then how do we treat it?

Yes. Well, great question. And, and, and I think we hinted about it a little bit before, but, you know, 88% of Americans are in poor metabolic health. That's staggering. That's almost nine out of 10 of us. And that is, poor metabolic health means insulin resistance. And I'm gonna unpack that in a minute. 75% are overweight, 42% are obese, 40% of kids are overweight. I mean, it's terrible. One in two Americans has pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. All this is caused by the amount of starch and sugar in our diet. Broccoli is a carbohydrate. That's fine to eat. but white flour is also carbohydrate. It's worse than sugar in your body. So, the volume of starch and sugar that's predominantly our calories is driving this poor metabolic health. And what happens when you eat Sargent sugar, which by the way we really didn't have for most of our human history. We basically were hunters and gatherers till 10,000 years ago. And then if we had grains, we had whole grains, the milling of flour didn't happen till about 150 years ago. and when that started and they started to actually refine the flour is when we saw these nutritional deficiencies like berry berry and plegora and these horrible vitamin deficiencies. It was really terrible. And they actually, you know, they actually discovered vitamins because they started depleting the food. So when we, when we eat in a way that has all the starch and sugar, it causes our blood sugar to go up. that causes our insulin to respond to try to keep the blood sugar down. So you can have normal blood sugar if you go to your doctor. You can have a normal A1C, which is your average blood sugar. But if your insulin is high, you're in big trouble. I saw a guy who was 400 pounds. His blood sugar was perfect. His average blood sugar was perfect. His insulin was like 20 times normal because it was keeping everything down. Oh, man. Now, insulin gets that high because the body becomes resistant. to the effects of the insulin. It's like the boy who cried wolf. So you need more and more and more insulin to get the blood sugar down. More and more insulin. What does that do? Well, insulin has a number of roles. In a small amount, it's good, keeps your blood sugar good. If you're healthy, fine. If you have no insulin, you get type 1 diabetes, you need insulin shots. But most people have what we call type 2 or pre-diabetes or insulin resistance. And it turns out that this is a driver of cancer, like the most common cancers, prostate, breast, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, heart disease, most heart attacks are caused by this, diabetes obviously, dementia, they're calling type 3 diabetes, depression. So many issues are driven by this insulin resistance that are burdening our society with chronic disease, which affects six out of 10 people. And so when you have this phenomenon in your body, it drives inflammation, it drives fat storage in your belly, it causes more hunger, it slows down your ability to lose weight, and it creates this vicious cycle of muscle loss and fat gain. It just, it's like super fuel on, on the aging process. That's why you see diabetics, you know, have, you know, far more heart attacks. They're four times the risk of dementia. They're more likely to get cancer. They're, it's just all related to this phenomena. And then if you're talking about the game of longevity, you know, I remember this lecture I heard, like, 20 plus years ago from a Harvard Professor who was talking about, you know, preventive cardiology. He said, Mark, if you could take a group of 100 year old people who have perfectly clean arteries. They'd have one thing in common. I said, what's that? He says they're insulin sensitive, meaning they are able to easily regulate their blood sugar with very minimal amounts of insulin. But most of us, well, most because they're basically healthy or they have genetics that help them or they eat, you know, well. But the key is to keep your in the game of aging is keep your insulin low.

Right?

And if you keep your insulin low, you're going to be activating all these anti-aging mechanisms in your body. If your insulin is high, you're going to accelerate all the aging.

So that's why starch and sugar are poison. When insulin is high, it's weakening immune system, it's increasing inflammation which is making.

You age faster essentially and get sick, right? Yes. And not only that, Louis, what is happening now with COVID in America, why are we the worst country in the world with COVID It's not just political mismanagement. The fact is that we were the sitting duck perfect place for COVID to land and cause havoc. Why? Because we're obese. Because we're obese, we're overweight, we have chronic diseases, and these are all diseases of inflammation. So we are pre-inflamed. And when COVID hits, it's like gas on the fire. It just blows up your immune system, which is why you see these cytokine storms and this overwhelming inflammation in the body. It's not the virus that kills people. It's people's own bodies overactive inflammation because it's primed because of our inflammatory diet. And so nobody's talking about this. I think Bill Morris, the only one I've seen talking about in the media, who says, Hey guys, the thing we can do, yes, maybe we need to be protecting ourselves and practicing social distancing. maybe getting vaccines. That's a whole rabbit hole. It shouldn't go down. But nobody's talking about getting healthy, our diet or losing weight or immunorejuvenation or even things like vitamin D, which are so cheap and simple. I mean, if I were president, I would literally give free dose of vitamin D to every man, woman and child in America.

Just boom. Give it to them. There's a lot of research showing that vitamin D is defending the body against COVID, right? Yeah.

If your vitamin D is low, you're 80% more likely to end up in the hospital and die. If your vitamin D is high, you're 94% less likely to end up in the hospital or in the ICU. 94%. That's better than vaccines, right? With a lot less hassle and risk and side effects. Yeah.

Wow. Okay, so how do we treat it then? What are the things that we need to do when our insulin is high?

Well, guess what? I wrote a book. It's a really good book. It's called the Pegan Diet. And it helps. It helps you do that. And essentially the principles are, you know, things that I'm almost embarrassed, Louis, that I have my career telling people to do stuff that's so self-evident.

Right?

Eat real food. We all know, yeah.

Eat real food. Don't eat crap. Eat lots of vegetables.

We just sleep poorly one night or over and over and over again. How does that impact the brain chemistry?

Yeah, so I think firstly in response to the general question, sleep is probably the single most effective thing that you can do to reset both your brain, but also your body health, of course, as well. And I don't say that flippantly against the notions of diet and exercise. Of course, both of those are fundamentally critical. But if I were to take you, Lewis, and I were to deprive you of sleep for 24 hours, deprive you food for 24 hours or deprive you of even water or exercise for 24 hours. And then I were to map the brain and body impairment that you would suffer after each one of those four hands down by a country mile, a lack of sleep will implode your brain and body far more significantly. The only one I would probably lose out on is oxygen. At that point, I'll give it up. You know, sleep will take the silver medal. Oxygen definitely gets the gold. but thereafter sleep seems to be paramount.

Over sleep, food and water, sleep is the most important thing.

I would say, yeah, you know, I used to say that sleep was the third pillar of good health alongside diet and exercise, but I think the evidence has suggested that I was utterly wrong. That sleep in fact is the foundation on which those two other things sit. And you can do wonderful things in those two domains. But if you're not getting sufficient sleep, those things tend to be far more futile as a consequence.

And so what is sufficient sleep then?

So right now we recommend somewhere between seven to nine hours for the average adult. Once we know that you go below seven hours of sleep, we can start to measure objective impairments in your brain and your body. And in fact, the number of people who can survive on less than six hours of sleep without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number and expressed as a percent of the population is zero.

Without any impairment, what does that mean?

So, if I can measure lots of different operations of your brain, let's say your cognition, your attention, your learning and memory, also your moods and your emotions and your anxiety, or downstairs in the body, I can measure aspects of your cardiovascular system or your blood pressure, or I could measure your immune system or your metabolic system, how it's regulating your blood sugar and your glucose. I can measure this sort of pinwheel, this kaleidoscope of health metrics on Lewis Howes. And then I can see when I keep dialing you back with less and less sleep, at what point do I see at least one of those things demonstrating a breaking point. And it's very rare for us to be able to find any individual who can go, below six hours of sleep and not show some kind of impairment. And a great, even frightening demonstration of this, a study took a group of perfectly healthy individuals, and they limited them to six hours of sleep a night for one week. And then they measured the change in their gene activity profile relative to when those same individuals were getting a full eight-hour night of sleep.

And what happened?

And there were two critical findings. The first was that a sizable and significant 711 genes were distorted in their activity caused by that one week of short sleep. And that's, you know, in some ways, I think about this, Lewis, because it's reality. We know that almost a third of the population is trying to survive on six hours of sleep or less. So it's not just, you know, total sleep deprivation, which doesn't happen very frequently, this is a common occurrence. what I found most interesting was that about half of those genes were actually increased in their activity. The other half were decreased. Now, those genes that were suppressed were genes associated with your immune system. So you became immune compromised or immune deficient. Those genes that were increased in their activity or what we call overexpressed were genes associated with the promotion of tumors. genes that were associated with cardiovascular disease and stress, and genes that were associated with long-term chronic inflammation within the body. And I make that point just because, you know, many people, I think, have this concern about things such as genetically modified embryos or even genetically modified food. But when we don't get sufficient sleep, we are unwittingly performing a genetic , manipulation on ourselves, you know, if we don't let our kids get the sleep that they need, then we're inflicting a similar genetic engineering experiment on them as well.

Wow. This is crazy. So what if you've been sleeping less than six hours a night for years? What is that saying to your genes? And is there a way to recover the gene damage and reverse and go back to a healthy genes, healthy body, healthy life?

So firstly, we know that short sleep duration, so using that sweet spot, and we can speak about over sleeping or excess sleep, because I think that's an interesting part that hasn't been spoken about too much. But using that recommended CDC amount of seven to nine hours of sleep, there is a simple fact, firstly, across the lifespan, which is the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. That short sleep predicts all cause mortality. But then we can dig a little bit deeper and start to sort of ask, you know, exactly what is going on? Why is there such mortality risk caused by insufficient sleep? And what we know is that a lack of sleep and typically getting certainly less than six hours of sleep is associated with a high risk of cardiovascular disease, high risk of diabetes, high risk of stroke, high risk of dementia. And I would love to double click on that and go into the Alzheimer's disease risk cause that now evidence is very, very strong. And then downstairs in the body, we know that there is links between a lack of sleep and certain forms of cancer. If I were to take you and limit you to, let's say, four or five hours of sleep for one week, your blood sugar levels would be so disrupted that your doctor would classify you as being pre-diabetic.

Oh my goodness.

So that's not a lifetime, that's just one week. And there's an even more interesting experiment that I think speaks to the subtlety of this, because there is the largest sleep study that's ever been conducted, and it happens actually to around 1.6 billion people across 70 countries twice a year, and it's called Daylight Savings Time. Now, in the spring, when we lose just one hour of sleep opportunity, firstly, what we've seen is that there seems to be a 24% increase in relative heart attack risk the next day, which stuns me. And what's fascinating in the fall, in the autumn, when we gain an hour of sleep, there's a 21% reduction in heart attacks. So it's bidirectional, and that's just one hour of sleep. And you see, there was some great recent data, you see a very similar profile regarding that daylight saving shift for road traffic accidents on our streets.

I've heard about this.

Tragically, suicide rates as well. And then even more recently, what we discovered is that during that spring time shift when you lose an hour of sleep, the sentencing of federal judges is significantly harsher because their mood and their emotion is that much worse because of that one hour of lost sleep that they dole out harsher sentences. so, you know, we can walk, you know, you can ask the question, what about a lifetime? We don't even have to ask about a lifetime of short sleep. We can ask about these really, you know, one week of short sleep or even one night of one hour of lost sleep. And I think that's how fragile our brains and our bodies are to this thing called a lack of sleep. And you could then ask, well, you know, why are we so sensitive? Because I can go without food for 24 hours, and I can go without water for 24 hours. You know, I'm still not too bad. I'm in fairly decent shape. Why is sleep the exception to that rule? And the answer seems to be this. Human beings are the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent good reason.

Why is that?

And It was such a unique thing. And what that means is that mother nature through the course of evolution, because no other species does this without real need for survival. And I can speak about some of the exceptions, but human beings are strange like this. In other words, mother nature hasn't have to face the challenge of coming up with a solution called sleep deprivation, because she's never faced it in the course of evolution. And so, there is no safety net in place here. And that's why we think human beings implode so quickly and thoroughly, mentally, cognitively, and physically, caused by insufficient sleep.

And why do you think, why are the majority of people bad at getting good sleep? Is it, we're distracted? Is it we think we need to be doing more? Is it we're stressed and worried about the past and the future? Is it, you know, What we just want to work harder? What is the main cause of why we get poor sleep?

That's such a fundamental question. And in some ways, it's all of the above plus. So I think the first, and I've thought about this a great deal, why are we suffering this global sleep loss epidemic that we're under right now? I think the first thing is that unfortunately, sleep has an image problem. That the PR agent for sleep should be fired. because we associate sufficient sleep with this concept of being lazy, of being slothful. And that's a terrible disservice to this thing called sleep. And it is very different to things like diet and exercise. You know, I think a lot of people like to virtue signal with, you know, what they eat. And they certainly are very proud to tell you, you know, I work out five times a week. I'm in the gym at this time of morning and you know, all of which I think are great and to be applauded and supported. But we have the very opposite. We have this almost, you know, well, we, we don't. Some, some niches of society have this sleep machismo attitude. You know, this kind of, you can sleep when you're dead mentality, which, by the way, based on the evidence, is mortally unwise. Yeah. It will lead to both a shorter life and. a life that is significantly less healthy. So I think the first thing is we need to change our cultural appreciation of sleep from something that is a waste of time to something that in fact is an incredible investment. It is probably the very best and the most freely available, democratic and painless health insurance policy that I could ever imagine. I think the next thing is the way that we work in society. We are working for longer hours and before the pandemic, people were commuting increasingly longer amounts of time. What that meant was that people were leaving the house earlier, they were arriving home later, and no one wants to shortchange time with family or Netflix or whatever it is your poison. and so the one thing that has become squeezed like vice grips in the middle of the night is this thing called a sufficient bout of slumber. But then there are plenty of people who give themselves the opportunity to get enough sleep, but they can't obtain it. And that is where things such as insomnia or sleep disorders, things like snoring come into play. And you touch our and I know that you've spoken and I'm so grateful for what you've done regarding discussions of mental health. We know that one of the principal roadblocks to getting this thing called a good night of sleep is anxiety.

Stress, worry, anxiety, regret, all those things.

Yep.

Resentment and holding on to all that stuff.

It is, that is toxic to sleep. You're absolutely right. And in fact, anxiety and physiological stress is our principal model for the explanation of insomnia right now. It's not the only cause, but it seems to be one of the principal causes. And in modern society, it's become so easy, and I'm not finger wagging, I'm just as guilty. We are constantly on reception, but rarely do we do reflection. And unfortunately, the time when most of us do reflection is when we turn off the light and our head hits the pillow. And that's the last time.

That's the last time.

Oh, you know, because I don't know about you, Lewis, but, you know, at night in the dark, thoughts are not the same thing. You know, concerns become twice as big or the 10x the size of concerns. I start to worry, I ruminate, I catastrophize. Yet in the light of day, those things seem very different. And so we can speak about sleep tips perhaps later on, but certainly getting right with your emotions and your anxiety is key to good sleep. And that's one of the things that prevents sleep. I also think that there's an issue at the public health level. We've had in many first world nations wonderful government mandates regarding health, regarding drink driving, regarding safe sex regarding drugs and alcohol and even food and even inactivity and sitting. When was the last time you heard of a First World Nation provide a public health message and memorandum regarding sleep?

Never.

And I don't remember one either. So from every level at a public health global you know, government level down to a workplace level. You know, we lauded the airport warrior who's flown through four different time zones in the past three days. They were on email at two and then they're back in the office at six. You know, we. So we need to.

We celebrated those people.

We did, you know, and the funny thing, by the way, is that after about 20 hours of being awake straight, you are as cognitively impaired as you would be if you were legally drunk. Now, I would never, you know, as a CEO, say, I have got this fantastic team of people. They're drunk all of the time. But we do say, I've got this fantastic group of people. They just are at it all hours. They are dedicated. They're always working. You know, they spend minimal time sleeping. They're just all out. They love this project. But we've got this strange mentality. And then, I think it comes down to, you know, even within schools, we've got this incessant model of early school start times. And- Super early, isn't it? It's- It's incredible.

We've got to be there, what, 6:30 or 7:00 or something, right?

6:30, 7:00, 7:30. And that data is actually very powerful. What we found is that when we delay school start times, first academic grades increase, truancy rates decrease, psychological and psychiatric issues decrease. But then what we also discovered is that the life expectancy of students increased. And you may be thinking, well, hang on a sec, you know, how do you measure that? And the leading cause of death in teenagers 16 to 18 is actually not suicide. That's second. It's road traffic accidents.

Really?

And here sleep matters enormously. And I'll give you one example. It was in Teton County in Wyoming. They delayed their school start times from 7:30 in the morning to 8:55. By the way, what are we doing trying to educate our children at 7:30 in the morning?

I can't think. Yeah, I mean, I remember being in school and being every day was hard for me. Every day I was tired. Every day I was hard to focus or I'd be irritable or wanted to like, you know, jittery or something, but it was like so hard to focus. And then you're at lunchtime and then I eat and I'm tired again afterwards and you want me to focus and pay attention at a desk. It's like, it doesn't work like that for me, especially I don't sleep or very well.

Well, for any, any, you know, sort of developing brain, it doesn't work like that. And for some people to make a 7:30 a.m. start time, school buses, will begin leaving at 6:00 or 5:30 in the morning. That means that some kids are having to wake up at 5:00, 5:15. This is lunacy. And what we've understood from the academic grades, and I'll come back to the car accidents in a second, when sleep is abundant, minds flourish. And when it's not, they don't. And what we've discovered with the road traffic accidents in Tetten County, when they made that shift The only thing more remarkable than the extra one hour of sleep that those kids reported getting was the reduction in car crashes. The following year, there was a 70% drop in vehicle accidents.

Wow.

And to put that in context, you know, the advent of ABS technology, anti-lock brake systems, that dropped accident rates by 20 to 25% and it was deemed a revolution. Here is the simple fact of getting enough sleep, that will drop accident rates by 70%. So, you know, I need to get off my soapbox. But what I would say is this, I think if our goal as educators is to educate and not risk lives in the process, then we are failing our children in the most spectacular manner with this incessant model of early school start times.

Is anyone listening to this that you've been speaking about this too? And they're actually adopting this new model, whether it be work time or school time or just integrating this? Do you know systems that are integrating this?

There have been some, and I think I've tried to do this in the education domain. I've tried to do this within medicine because the way that we train residents is almost inhumane. Actually, it's not almost, it absolutely is inhumane. And the statistics there are stunning as well. And then I've tried to do it in the workplace too, because I do a lot of speaking events at Fortune 500 companies. And at first, I think I took the wrong approach where I was really speaking a little bit more about the compassionate approach, why it's good and kind for people to gift them more sleep. Because I see sleep as a biological necessity. and if it's a biological necessity, then I think it's a civil necessity. And if it's a civil necessity, sleep is a civil right. But what I would say is that that wasn't particularly well received. You know, I'd go into business companies and say, your employees, you know, they're desperate for more sleep. They will be happier and healthier. Or I would speak about medicine, and I would speak about, you know, what it was doing to the patients. and the harm, and it would fall on deaf ears. What I then realized is that if you're going to change large organizations, you have to speak in their currency, which is money.

Money. Yeah. You need to.

And then I would describe the medical malpractice lawsuits that would come and the cost savings within medicine firstly. And then administration started to change the tune because before that, you know, there was almost this old boys' network in medicine where we went through residency and it's almost a hazing. And despite armed with incredible data to the contrary, I think the mentality 10 years ago when I started trying to do that was, My mind's made up, don't confuse me with the evidence. Crazy.

Why? Because they went through that themselves and so they want to pay it back or something.

I think so. I think there was I went through.

Hell, so everyone else has to go through hell, yeah.

Right, it's a rite of passage. If you are tough enough, you'll make it through. It's kind of like boot camp, which I don't think we need to do anymore. And then within business, you could describe, the Rand Corporation did an independent survey a couple of years ago, and what they found was that insufficient sleep will cost most nations about 2% of their GDP of their gross domestic product. so here in the US that number was $411 billion of lost productivity due to insufficient sleep. In Japan it was $130 billion. My home country, the UK, it was over $50 billion. So if I could solve the sleep loss crisis within the workplace, I could almost double the budget for education in the US or I could halve the healthcare deficit. So when you speak about money, then people start to listen. So that's how I've tried to communicate. But, and I don't think I'm a, I, I don't think I'm a particularly good communicator. And I've been sometimes bull in a china shop, as I probably have been for the first however long we've been talking. But it's just because I'm so, you know, I'm just desperately passionate about this thing called sleep. And some years ago, before I started trying, I wrote a book, and then I've been doing podcasts. Sleep was the neglected stepsister in the health conversation of today. It was a second citizen. And I was so sad to see the disease, the sickness, the harm, the lack of productivity, the impact on education that a lack of sleep was having.

There's an excuse, I'm tired. And then there's a shift in the world. Does the 5:00 a.m. club shift at this time? Do people say, you know what? Let me really take it easy for a few months or is that an excuse for too long to get back into your vision?

I think that's a profound question and I would say trust your instinct. There are times, for example, as an artist when I'm writing and it's flowing and I just know this, trust your natural cycles because your higher power, call it your instinct, call it your intuition, call it your artistry, knows what it's doing. So there are times to be productive and there are times to rest. Now, I very much believe in the 5 AM Club in the 2020 formula. I very much believe that it will create a pharmacy of mastery within your brain. It's been proven by science. Even just the simple idea of starting your day with some sweaty exercise, why sweaty exercise? when you sweat, it'll release the BDNF, which John Ratey at Harvard calls miracle grow for the brain. But just that idea of exercising first thing in the morning will help you become more resilient, peaceful, strong during the day. So yes, do your morning routine, yes, run the 20-20-20 formula, and then judge by results. Having said that, If you've been up at 3:00 in the morning because you've lost your job, because you're just picking up on the energy of the world right now where there's so much fear, you're dealing with COVID or you have a family member you've lost as a result of the pandemic. Self-love, personal care requires that you rest, recover and do what you need to do. And I think, you know, that's one of the things I say this with great respect, but when I read the books or see people saying, you must be like a robot and follow a morning routine or nightly ritual or whatever your best habits are, I believe there must be room for the hard seasons of life. And, you know, when my heart has been broken, when I've gone through my periods of suffering, I haven't been as disciplined. I haven't been as rigorous. I've had the inopportune pizza night, you know? And here's what I would also say is, my ego, because a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. My ego says, Robin, you're not being productive. You're not on your A-game you're not a warrior. But you know what I've realized? I might not be creatively productive according to the definition of society during those Cycles or seasons of suffering. But am I not spiritually productive? Am I not emotionally productive? I mean, when does a human being crack the shell of the ego that covers their hearts and learns the human virtues? I mean, Nelson Mandela learned how to be Nelson Mandela in his Robben Island season. And so I think we learn honesty and compassion and vulnerability and creativity when things are falling apart, not when they're not in the seasons of sunshine.

Yeah. And I look at life in terms of sports analogies. And so for me, there's four seasons in, I guess, the seasons of the year, but then also in sports, there's really kind of four seasons as well. There's the pre-season to prepare you for the season. And then there's the playoff season. which is where you're hustling, you're all in, you're only thinking about one thing and you're focused on that energy and you're not burning the candle on both ends, but you're all in on that thing and less on everything else. And then there's the postseason where, okay, the championship is done or that season is done and now we have the postseason, the time to reflect, the time to reevaluate our goals, our life, what worked this last season, what didn't work, do I need to tweak my routine? Do I need to, you know, be in different relationships? Who do I need to bring into my circle? What do I need to eliminate in my circle? So I look at life in terms of, you know, sports seasons, just because that's how I've lived my life. But I think if, and if we can, we can do that, then you're gonna have time to rest and reflect and you're gonna have a balance in that kind of seasonal progression of life where it doesn't have to be robotic every single day. for 20 years or the rest of your life. So at least that's the way I look at it.

You know, I think rest is a secret weapon. There's a line in the 5am Club, which is rest is not a luxury, it's a necessity. One of my favorite authors is Haruki Murakami, the great Japanese novelist. And he said, when I'm not writing the Book, I'm writing the book. I mean, you're an author, but it's not any creative, any productive. We beat ourselves up, or maybe it's just me, but we beat ourselves up if we're not doing, but how can you calibrate world-class doing if you don't make the time for being? And so those times where, you know, nature or our instinct or our inner artist says, these are times to pull back from the world and sunbathe and read the classics and write in a journal and have four hour meals with the people we love and travel when it used to be safe to travel. Those are not times to feel guilty. John Lennon said, Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. And so what I've realized is the greatest productives, the greatest artists, the greatest thinkers, the greatest heroes They were cool with rest and recovery. They understood that elite performance is not like a marathon. It's more like a sprint. And the energy project to give credit where it's due, they've evangelized this when they talk about energy. It's the greatest productives work in sprints versus marathons. And so all I'm saying is, you're right. Life is a series of seasons and enjoy the seasons and that's what's gonna actually allow you to play the game for a long time but also do your greatest work. I mean, my instinct now is I'm about three weeks away from submitting this manuscript on the new book and my instinct is get into another book and this morning I realized, I'm gonna take next year I'm gonna have great conversations. I'm gonna travel. Hopefully it'll be safe to travel. I'm gonna enjoy the fruits of my labor and enjoy life. And that's gonna be incubation for the next book after this.

Yeah.

What about prevention?

What are foods that can prevent cancer?

Well, it turns out that two apples a day actually can lower the rate.

Of lung cancer and colon cancer.

Why?

Because there are natural substances in apples like quercetin.