How FEAR Affects Your Brain, How To Strengthen Your Immune System & The 3 Important Fats For Brain Health w/Shawn Stevenson EP 1141

This is episode number 1141 with international best-selling author Sean Stevenson. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Maya Angelou said, you can only become great at the thing you're willing to sacrifice for. And Stephen Covey said, only the disciplined are truly free. The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions. Some good quotes today. And my guest is Shawn Stevenson. If you were here for part one, then get ready for part two. As Shawn is a graduate of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, where he studied business, biology and nutritional science. He's the founder of Advanced Integrative Health a company that provides wellness services for individuals and organizations worldwide. He's the author of the international best-selling book called Sleep Smarter that has helped transform my sleep in a massive way and the creator of the Model Health Show. And today we're talking about his book Eat Smarter. Use the power of food to reboot your metabolism, upgrade your brain and transform your life. And again, this is part two of the conversation. So make sure to check out part one as well by going to lewishouse.com/1140. as you don't want to miss what we shared there. And in this episode we discuss how fear affects your brain and body and really the power of fear on the brain and the body. The simple ways you can start strengthening your immune system today. The biggest factors leading to chronic disease, the three most important fats for the brain health and a lot more good stuff here. Again, if you are enjoying this at any moment, make sure to share this with a friend that you think would be inspired as well. Just copy and paste the link on the podcast platform, or you can go to lewishouse.com/1141 for the full show notes and share it with people.

There.

Very excited about this episode in just a moment. The one and only Sean Stevenson. One of the best parts about my job as a podcast host is getting to know people on a deeper level. And I love discovering the interests my guests have that they don't always talk about. You know, the world class athlete whose favorite pastime is painting or the billionaire who still plays a weekend garage band. And the truth is everyone has layers. and people are rarely as simple as they appear on the surface. For marketers, that complexity can make the job even more challenging. After all, how can you reach your customers if you don't really know them? That's where TransUnion's marketing solutions come in. TransUnion brings clarity to marketing chaos by delivering a 360-degree view of your customer, helping you deepen your insights, accelerate your decision-making, and better measure the impact of every marketing dollar. Visit transunion.com/clarity to learn more. this podcast is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual. Everyone wants to feel good about their finances, right? Well, that's why I've had life insurance with Northwestern Mutual for years. Their financial professionals ask the right questions, truly listen, and help uncover opportunities most people miss. I've seen it firsthand. Northwestern Mutual has been a part of my journey from the very beginning, providing the security and peace of mind I need as a human and an entrepreneur. Find a better way to money@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Paid testimonial by a Northwestern Mutual policy owner.

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You think the mind is controlled and say, I'm going to have 1500 calories right now with this ice cream and donuts, and nothing is going to be absorbed in my body. It's going to go out to me and you just manifest, you just decide and declare, no, it's not entering my body.

Didn't you fire walk?

I did, yeah.

You see what I'm saying? I did it too. I did it too.

I think it's possible.

Yeah, and I actually, a friend of mine, she stepped on a coal that was not in the fire pit and she- Burned herself. Yeah, Jamie Masters.

She wasn't in the right mindset probably.

Right, she wasn't, she just accidentally, it was like right there, just kind of like sitting there for a minute. Burned her. And burned her. But anyways, we walked across that stuff, man. So, hypothetically, it could happen. But here's the thing. Let's dive in a little bit deeper on what that looks like. Ali Crum out of Stanford at the time when she conducted this study, she wanted to find out how our thoughts affect our digestion, how our thoughts affect how we assimilate nutrients.

Give it to me, all right?

And this is called the Milkshake Experiment.

Well, love a good milkshake.

So, they blended up a batch of milkshakes. and they were all somewhere around 380 calories. And I detailed this in Eat Smarter a lot more. So it might be 360, but I believe it's 380 calories. Now, so all the milkshakes are the exact same amount of calories. They're the same level in the same containers that they're passing out. Now here's the thing. They take it and now they put labels on them that they are different amounts of calories. On one set of milkshakes they put that they're 100, and 80 calorie sensible milkshakes. Right, right. And then on others, they put that this is a 620 calorie indulgent. Oh my gosh.

But they're all the same.

They're all the same. They're all the same.

That's fascinating.

And so here's what happened. Well, I think we gotta get a little bit of the kind of endocrine biology here with basic satiety hormones. So leptin and ghrelin. All right, so leptin is a major satiety hormone. Makes us feel satisfied. We feel we're in our body, we're not ravenously hungry, right? When leptin is level and also leptin sensitivity, it's a whole other conversation. So we got leptin satiety hormone, then we have ghrelin, which is a bona fide hunger hormone, all right? But it's more than that. It's more than that. It also has to do with our metabolic rate and other things too. But basically when ghrelin levels are high, it's driving us to go eat something. I think about it like the ghrelin gremlin. Right? Don't feed them after midnight. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? So the ghrelin gremlin. Now with ghrelin levels going up, that's going to drive us to eat. But when they're going down, it's going to make us inherently feel more satisfied. So here's what happened. The people who were given the indulgent milkshakes that were, again, they were higher calories, same calories. They thought they were higher. Their ghrelin levels went down three times lower.

What do you mean they were less hungry?

Their ghrelin levels, their hunger hormones, went down three times lower than what they actually consumed.

Their desire to be hungry went down.

Right. It went down three times lower.

That's crazy, okay? Because they thought they were having a lot of calories.

Yes. They thought that they were having something indulgent that was very calorie dense. The people who had the ones that were labeled, you know, 100 calories SensaShake, their ghrelin levels barely budged. It just seems like they were having.

A glass of milk and they were just like, I need some more.

It's like they had water. Water. Wow. And they're like, soon after they're gonna be.

Pour it back up. Yeah, yeah.

Because they believed that the calories were lower in that particular item.

That's fat. Now I wonder if you believed you had 680 calories, would you actually add on a, is that a half a pound of fat? Or like a half a pound?

This is getting into scale. This is getting into the metabolic effects because it's not just about calories. and we talked about this last time, there are these epicaloric controllers. And I detail all of them in Eat Smarter, I detail them. But we talked about how the type of food itself controls how your body holds on to those calories or burns the calories off. We also go through how your metabolism works, how the process of fat loss actually works. Like where does fat go? We talked about all that last time. So there's these epicaloric controllers. One of them is your brain. For example, but also beyond that is your beliefs about what you're eating because it's going to change the hormonal cascade. Gosh, it's crazy. Right?

So give me an example. If I believe what I'm eating is high in calories, is lots of sugar, is, you know, bad for me, and I think this is really bad for me.

That's terrible. Yeah. That's terrible.

So don't, when you're eating this and saying, this is horrible for me, you're gonna keep eating the donuts. what should you be doing when you know you have something that's not the healthiest, but you're enjoying the sugar and the cheat foods?

That's the beautiful part about it. It's like, no, it's for me, being in this space and what I found, I think, a really great lane where we saw so much success with all the patients that we're working with is because nothing's off limits. We can't, we get into this giving food morality where something is bad. And if you're eating a food that's bad, what does that say about you as a person? So I'm eating this bad food. I must be bad.

Oh man. I can't control myself eating this.

We get into these really complex psychological shaming ourselves. Yeah, so when you're gonna eat the.

Best thing, when you're gonna eat the not optimal foods, just enjoy it. Just enjoy it.

Enjoy it.

I'm gonna enjoy this. I'm gonna have fun. Taste good.

The best time, the best time to eat something that we would consider like a treat or like, you know, we'll just say pizza or ice cream or donut. Yeah, it's when it's when we're feeling good, but we tend to do it when we're. It's so true.

It's when something's not going well in a relationship or something at work, we're like, I just wanna.

It tends to compound the issue, you know? But also they can be. If. If it's done with intentionality, it can be a part of the healing process. That's the thing, too, because, again, we get so black and white with stuff like you shouldn't be doing this, shouldn't be doing that. It makes us humans, we don't like rules in a sense. It makes us want to rebel against the thing. And so it can be a part of the process, but we have to maintain integrity. Because for example, carbohydrates, it's really interesting that, and I actually did a master class on this on my show recently, talking about natural, clinically proven ways to increase serotonin production in our bodies. And so serotonin is a dual hormone and neurotransmitter. so it has multiple impacts on our endocrine system and on our nervous system. But serotonin is noted to be like this feel-good vibe to it. Like when serotonin is optimized, like a lot of antidepressants target serotonin. Okay. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. But it's not making you produce more, it's just trying to reduce the metabolism of it so it stays in your system longer in a sense. That's a whole other thing. So bottom line is this. carbohydrates actually increase serotonin levels.

Makes you feel better.

In a sense. Now, this isn't 100% true across the board, but it's seen in peer-reviewed evidence that having a little whack of some carbohydrates can actually increase serotonin.

Little french fries, little, you know.

Yeah, make you feel, get a little bit ahead of feeling good. So, but we have to put that in its proper place. We've all experienced this, but we think it's the sugar high. It's not just that, it's what it does to your your, your neurochemistry. It's what it does to your hormones.

That's really, it's what a carbs do to your hormones.

Well, it depends on the, the type of quality.

Quality of carbs.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And what time of day and everything. Yeah. So, but let's be clear.

I mean, doesn't your brain run on carbs?

Like, doesn't it run on, like, sugar and carbs? So this goes back to, and I think this is an important place for us to, to get here, is that the brain, as I mentioned, the blood-brain barrier has a tremendous amount. I think about the blood-brain barrier being like a massively complex toll booth. And at each of the tolls, there's like the best security guard in the world, like Wayne the Rob Johnson, or like whoever people wanna put in their mind. Maybe somebody really tough, maybe, I don't know, the Hulkster. Right. You know, I've been watching these A&E.

Have you seen any of those? I've heard they're amazing, the wrestling documentaries.

I gotta watch these, yeah. So maybe it's Macho Man. Yeah, yeah. Maybe he's at the toll booth, but they're only allowing certain things into the brains, very exclusive area. sugar has speed passes to get into the brain. As I mentioned, Harvard researchers have affirmed your brain will gladly confiscate half of the sugar you consume in a meal. All right? Now, with that said, what is the blood-brain barrier? How does this play into the inflammation? Cold complex. So the blood-brain barrier, it is something that is basically around the blood vessels. It's made from endothelial cells. So very similar to our cardiovascular system. Alright, so we have the endothelial cells. But the difference with the blood-brain barrier endothelium is that it is massively higher in mitochondria. So these are these energy power plants in all of our cells that are kicking off ATP. Alright, so these are like the metabolic nuclear power plants in our cells. Right? So your blood-brain barrier has a tremendous amount of mitochondria. That's another reason it so hungry for energy too. To protect your brain, it's running on a lot of energy. It's taking the energy to do that. So we've got the blood-brain barrier, but the blood-brain barrier is one of the major issues that's getting targeted and broken down by the way that we eat today. So now stuff is getting into the brain that shouldn't be there. Really? So now the question is what is causing the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier? I'll give you a few of those things. Yes. And creating more inflammation in the brain. One of them, as we already talked about, is sugar, rampant amounts of sugar. And I don't, I want to be clear, I'm not trying to demonize sugar. And some people might be like, you should demonize it. It's a part of our culture. And we don't want to make it so that something is inherently terrible in this treacherous thing. And something else other than is the best thing. All right. So it's, we know that sugar is not ideal for human consumption. This heavily refined process thing. We know that, okay? That we can look at things as good and not so good. It's not so good, all right? Now, with that said, the amount of sugar that we're consuming, it can actually kind of create this insulin resistance taking place in the brain, like I mentioned before, and create neuroinflammation and break down all surrounding tissues. So. And also cause a big fit for the microglial cells in the brain, the brain's immune system. So what takes place is it's even systemic. So diabetes with the rest of our body can cause also off-shooting insulin resistance in the brain as well. But the brain itself, our neurons can begin to become insulin resistant. So now we've got this sugar just kind of roaming free in the brain and tearing up stuff. All right, so that's a big, big problem. So sugar, number one. Number two, alcohol.

Mm, yep.

All right, now again.

Now you're gonna upset a lot of people.

I'm not saying people can't drink, but we just have to be aware of this that specifically, and there is a lot of peer-reviewed evidence on this now, alcohol is a known neurotoxin. And so what it does is, it is able to actually cross the blood-brain barrier. It's one of those things that can cross the blood-brain barrier, which a lot of stuff can't get into the brain. It's able to cross the blood-brain barrier and one of the the first thing that happens though is the release of endorphins. It makes us feel good. It's like sugar. It makes us feel good. So we know that alcohol is a well-established neurotoxin, but we don't see it like that. It's socially acceptable.

Very socially acceptable.

But a significant amount of people actually pass away each year from alcohol poisoning. And they can be perfectly healthy and just have a little bit too much. And it can affect the parts of the brain that are responsible for breathing, that are responsible for, you know, beating your heart. These are some of the ways that we can die from alcohol poisoning. Now, it's very unlikely. It's highly unlikely that that will happen. But we just got to keep this in place. And as a matter of fact, this was published in the BMJ, one of the most prestigious journals, the British Medical Journal. They found that even moderate drinking can.

Have these very similar effects to accelerating brain shrinkage. Well, this is what Dr. Daniel Amen has in his brain scans that I think there was 80,000 brain scan and a test, don't quote me on that, but that's what I remember, where it's like he showed the brains without alcohol and with, and I think all of them were smaller, I think, or something like that. Some are way worse than others with moderate alcohol. Maybe it's once or twice a week, one or two glasses a week or something, shrinkage of the brain. And I'm gonna find the exact stat of what that is, but I mean, it's like if we know this information, why do we keep doing it to ourselves? And maybe we don't know the information and that's why we just think it's socially acceptable and we're gonna be with our friends, we're gonna have drinks and one turns into three, turns into five and then we can't wake up the next morning. But why do we do it over and over again? I've never been drunk in my life and I'm not saying you're, you know, I have nothing against people drinking but if it's hurting the brain, if you're doing it consistently more than once or twice a week, if you know it's gonna hurt your brain, why continue to do it?

Yeah, that's a great, you just brought it up, which is, I don't think most folks actually know. We don't know on, we might know on a superficial level.

Right.

But we people, we haven't had the same amount of education in these things where it's a part of the culture as much as ignoring health. We're just in an unhealthy state period. Right. So in this study, they actually used MRIs and uncovered that even moderate drinking over long term causes significant brain shrinkage, specifically the hippocampus, which is the memory center of the brain. Now, it appears that the amount of shrinkage in the study appears to be directly related to how much a person drinks.

So if you drink once a week.

You should be fine. Yeah, even a couple of times a drink. So moderate drinking would be even that can be get into the category of, we'll say, even four to five nights a week, one to two- One class of wine or servings of alcohol depends on what it is, right? But for some people, that might be too much. But for some folks, most of the data what we do know is heavy drinking, right? But even moderate drinking, we've got to be mindful of our brain. We've got to take that into consideration.

I mean, listen, I'm not here to shame anyone because I eat, you know, probably more sugar than anyone should have in my lifetime. And that's my vice.

That's something that it's like on the.

Weekends, like, I'm splurging. You just murdered the cookies. You were just, you were just, you murdered cookies, man. I murdered your cookies. And when I had like seven, eight cookies, I don't know. So it's like, I'll give myself a couple of days where it's like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. and I don't beat myself up for it because I know the rest of the time I'm not doing that. So some people might do that with alcohol and that's fine. Sugar is gonna hurt me or create more belly fat. It's gonna be harder to like get rid of the belly fat, all these other things, and I'm aware of it. So it's like how can I continue to optimize? How can I continue to let go of that habit and replace it with something more powerful and empowering for the greater version of myself, for my vision, for my health and happiness? And when I have it, enjoy it, but don't do it too much, you know?

But that's the secret too, man, is that we also had an abundance of real food as well, you know? So at my place is where you first, like, you didn't just-- you tried guacamole recently, probably.

I've never had it once before with a friend.

And I was like, wow, you just dabbled in it.

Dabbled in it, but not in yours. I like a lot of it, man.

You got that guac in you.

I liked it.

And you know, my wife made it amazing though.

I was like, I don't think I can have normal guacamole.

I think it was like, it's gotta.

Be seasoned the right way, you know?

It's an E Smarter. It's good. Is that the way the recipe is in there? It's so good. So I was very, growing up the way that I did, I never, I didn't know what avocados were. Like I had no idea. Those were birds in the 20s. Hot pockets. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and I mean, honestly, man, you know, I eat fast food every day. Yeah. As long as I had like $2 at least, every day, and chicken nuggets when I was in college. But it also is just in the environment. You know, the closest thing to me was a liquor store, then, you know, Lee's Chicken, Domino's, McDonald's, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Chinese food restaurant. But this was like Bulletproof Glass, like they're not cooking good stuff for you. Arby's, Krispy Kreme's, Jack in the Box. This is all within like a mile radius of my house. And that's not even all of them. Papa John's, I can go on and on and on. In multiple directions, there wasn't a gym around me. That wasn't a part of the environment. Being from Ferguson, Missouri, that's where I spent my entire time in college and also just even when I got married, we're still in Ferguson, Missouri, Ferguson, Florissant, for the majority of my adult years actually, I was in Ferguson, Florissant. And so we just didn't have, we weren't exposed to what health looked like. The first time when I found out that Whole Foods existed, like, it's so far away from me. But there was only one in all.

Of St. Louis, by the way. Now you live like three blocks from one.

You could, in LA, you can literally throw a rock and hit a Whole Foods.

I know.

I mean, it's crazy. I'm not used to this. It's amazing. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. It's upgrading. But the thing is, also, we can get this conversation of being fashionable, being about real health. Because there are definitely some challenges what real health is here in this city as well.

Sure, sure.

But anyways, that's a little sidebar.

So sugar, alcohol, which is a neurotoxin, what's another thing that increases neuroinflammation?

Another one, and this is really interesting, and this is very timely for this, what I was actually gonna lead into.

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Real health is in the prevention and susceptibility to viral infections. Viruses can damage and break down the blood-brain barrier, create inflammation in the brain. I mean a virus. Listen to this. So this was published in the peer-reviewed journal Trends in Microbiology. Found that viruses can directly disrupt and damage the blood-brain barrier. But here's what I wanted to share with you, and this is new. I'm sharing this for the first time. This was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and it found that there's a troubling discovery recently that SARS-CoV-2 is able to interact with the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain itself.

What does that mean? How do you get it out of the brain?

That's the thing. Once it gets in there, it doesn't even matter. Like what are the downstream effects of that? So this virus is able to make its way to basically traverse the blood-brain barrier somehow. Maybe the blood-brain, and this for me, I always think of a meta perspective, like who are the samples? What is the state of health of the person? What is their blood-brain barrier health? How is it able to traverse the blood-brain barrier and get into the brain? Or is it just this virus is this particularly nefarious, you know what I mean? And so the question is, what do we do about this in defense? We have to be as healthy as possible. We know that even though the marketing around this is that this particular virus is indiscriminately hurting people, but I think maybe we shared this when I talked with you last, I'm not sure, but I think it's an important point. You know, I've got many family members and friends who are in the healthcare industry and even working on the front lines. And we tend to think that, of course, number one, they're going to be hardest hit. It would be obvious if you think about it.

Go around it all day long.

Right. And these are just absolutely amazing folks. However, what folks don't realize, and we can maybe put the link to this in the show notes for people, because this is what I do. I'm a research scientist, almost 20 years in this space. If you go to the CDC site and you look at who is actually being affected, because with healthcare workers, it is the biggest vocation being affected. If we're talking about job for job by SARS-CoV-2, But what's not shared and what's on the CDC site is that nine out of ten of the healthcare workers hospitalized with COVID-19 had at least one pre-existing chronic disease. Ooh. It's not two out of ten. It's not five out of ten.

Nine out of ten.

Nine out of ten had a pre-existing chronic disease. At least one. Wow. So it's not indiscriminate, okay? Because we've got, at this point, people have got the PPE. There's still a susceptibility. And the other part is about 75% of them were clinically obese. And it's right there. The CDC is where people, if you post anything, talk about it's getting directed to the CDC, but most people are not analyzing the data on the CDC. I love it. I love it. But also it's highlighting again, the thing that's not getting addressed, which is let's get our citizens healthier. When are we going to talk about helping to reduce this epidemic, these multiple epidemics, pandemics, Is epidemic expanded kind of multiple places?

What is the epidemic? Is it neuroinflammation? Is it obesity? What is the main causes of your mind that is hurting us?

We have an epidemic of chronic disease, period. Chronic disease. We have epidemics of, for example, an average of 630,000 people die from heart.

Disease every year here in the United States.

600,000?

630,000.

Die from a heart problem.

Heart disease. And what causes heart disease? stress, obesity, neuroinflammation, what else?

It's a complex disease. It's the number one killer. It's crazy. But here recently, and this is a unfortunate thing is that this is a footnote. It's not even talked about. 2020, when SARS-CoV-2 was the headline, almost 700,000 people died from heart disease. It jumped up significantly. Really?

Because of the stress.

Because of all things, all of it. Absolutely. Stress, disconnection from, you know, family. We're eating worse than we ever have prior to the pandemic because I was there, I was analyzing the numbers right out of the gate. The first couple of months, I was looking at processed food companies. I was looking at their profits. Oh, their profits. One company was about to go out of, one of the big ones was about to go out of business. And then they're filing for bankruptcy. COVID saved up.

Gyms closed. People weren't working out.

People are not going to the gym. You're getting Postmates.

Uber Eats or whatever it is, deliver to you all day.

It's far worse. We are now far sicker and more susceptible to viral infections than when it all started. Because we still have not focused on health and we can do all the superficial treatments. We can do the distancing, we can do fill in the blank. But we also, because we were in fear, because people were so influenced by what the experts were saying, we could have also said, this is an important time for you to really make sure that you were getting your sleep because your sleep is a primary controller of your immune system. Even with medical interventions and people taking an array of drugs, whatever type of drug they might be, whether it's a oral medication, injectable, and their ability to actually prevent the disease dramatically goes down when people are sleep deprived.

When they're sleep deprived, yeah.

Because your immune system is largely regulated the vast majority of our immune system is taking place is located in our gut, for example. And one of the things that we've noticed is that there's even a changing of the guard that takes place with our microbiome, even as the day goes on. The microbiome is so easily influenced by small things. I mean, if you sneeze, like your microbiome is going to make a shift, you know? But when we're sleep deprived, there are some really negative things that take place. And one of the studies that I actually mentioned is They took test subjects and they wanted to see what would happen when they just crossed a bunch of time zones and see what would happen with their microbiome. And so they took stool samples, you know, had them poop in a little nacho basket. That's how we do it. We could send you one in the mail. You could send it in and get a stool sample done. But they took stool samples and they analyzed their microbiome cascade because one of the things that we know today is that there's a microbiome cascade. associated with obesity, insulin resistance.

Interesting.

So when people in my clinical practice, they can get a stool sample done, I can get the report, I can have a high probability of knowing what their body composition is just based off their bacteria, whether or not they're obese. And so we know this now. And so what they did was, and these are healthy test subjects, and then they have them cross a bunch of time zones and they retest them. so it was like a 10-hour time difference. And they found that the bacteria basically get this kind of very strange jet lag. And their bacteria Cascade started to shift more towards one that's associated with obesity and insulin resistance just in a day. By traveling across time zones.

Just in one day.

So what should we do when he travels?

Because also, I, I didn't mention this.

Their sleep is disrupted as of.

They're not sleeping because of it.

Right. So their sleep is disrupted as a result. But the good news is just by them getting back onto a routine within a couple of days, it normalized. So we can get better, but we know how quickly things can go wrong. And this is another big part of this equation because there was a lot of pushback happening in the beginning, even with many of my friends and colleagues who are just at the top level of the health space of like, well, we just have to do these superficial things. because we can't get people healthier overnight. And here we are, we're going on two years here soon. We're about a year, we're over a year and a half into this. And the conversation has not shifted to getting, what are some of the clinically proven things, simple things people can do to fortify their immune system and help to reduce their risk of chronic diseases? Because we know that is the number one thing.

What are those?

The number one risk.

What are those? Respect. Sleep, healthier foods, fasting, and even fasting.

I'm going to give you an example. More water, what's the based off peer-reviewed evidence. So researchers at Appalachian State University found that simply just going for a short walk in nature or instantly, just anywhere, just go for a 20-30 minute walk boosts your immune parameters, most notably for neutrophils and also natural killer cells. It's a temporary boost. But what if you're doing this consistently? Like America, make sure that you wash your hands, socially distance, but also make sure you get in your 20-minute walk today, America. We can create an absolute transformation in our culture because people will do it.

Get 1,000 steps, right? Screw 10,000, get 1,000 steps in, right?

Something. If this is framed as a way to help you to defend your body from this nefarious condition, which it is, we know that the biggest susceptibility, I'll share this with you as well, And this again, it's on the CDC site. 90, over 95% of the people who passed away with SARS-CoV-2 on the death certificate had an average of four pre-existing chronic diseases and or comorbidities. Really?

95%.

Not over 95%. Had an average of four pre-existing conditions and poor comorbidities. So it's not just comorbidities. So this is, it could be, they have SARS-CoV-2, but then they also have influenza. They have SARS-CoV-2, but they also have pneumonia. So these are all comorbidities. But we know that at least one pre-existing chronic disease across the board is included in that.

Now, what about the chronic disease?

What we focus on though, unfortunately, is just the people that are quote, perfectly healthy. So less than 5%.

And showcasing these people and be like, look, this person died too.

And so we don't talk about the underlying issue, which is again, getting people healthier. Here's the thing too, which the perfectly healthy aspect, that's all still going to be debatable because you and I can be as healthy as we want to be. If we are in a state where we're really stressed, we're in fear, we are in a position where we are sleep deprived temporarily, our immune system can absolutely get trampled on. Heightened or whatever. It's going to increase our risk, our susceptibility to viral infection.

This is what I was mentioning to you about when I was a kid growing up. My dad wouldn't allow us to, he would turn the TV or he would mute it if there was ever medical commercials on, if there was ever drug commercial, things like that, or alcohol. He actually would mute or turn the channel so that we wouldn't be susceptible to all the different messaging of the medical industry. If you're feeling this, if you're feeling this, you need X, Y, and Z medicine. And he really believed that that was causing a lot more fear in us kids when we would consume and watch this, this commercial, this messaging, this influence over and over. Because it was pretty much every other commercial was like a drug commercial, from what I remember, because he was always, he was always turning it off. Yeah. He was always turning the channel because he wouldn't want us to be consumed by fear. What about the chronic disease, if that's even considered that, of fear in the country and in the world? you know, we could be as healthy as possible, but if you have fear in your mind consistently thinking, I'm gonna get this, or I gotta protect myself, what about eliminating fear? How do we do that?

I love you. This is why, like, this is going right to listen. Listen, I have not shared this yet. This is from the CDC. And so they were looking at five million, almost five million, 480, 4, 889, 447. hospitalized adults and 540,667 patients with COVID-19, of whom 95% had at least one underlying medical condition. But let me tell you the strongest risk factor for death when they actually contracted the virus. The strongest risk factors for death, and this is according to the CDC, and this is these for folks listening, and even watching some of this stuff is seeing is believing. So we've got to put this in the show notes for people to be able to see.

So you can see the actual notes from this study.

You can see the study. Yeah. The strongest risk factor for death, number one was obesity, which we've already talked about. Number two was anxiety and fear related disorders. Oh my gosh. Number three was diabetes with complications.

Oh my gosh. This is anxiety related issues. Wow. That was the number two reason for death.

Number two.

Based on the CDC.

Number two, risk factor. Risk factor. Associated with death. Oh, wow.

Risk factor. Okay, man. And how much of that has to do with the brain and mindset?

Nobody's talking about this. What happened during the past year and a half? Oh, my God. Have our fear levels gone up or down?

Oh, in general, up.

Exponentially.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exponentially. and this gets into the place of ethical information, you know, with the media. And, you know, some folks might have seen some of the exposés done on, you know, some of the news organizations getting caught on, like, a hot mic, for example, and admitting that they're putting the date full.

The CNN, I think, or something.

I shared that. I was like the first person. I packaged it up. Now, I didn't do the report, though, right? But I just created, like, this viral thing. because I did some of the science behind what was happening as well. So they admitted to putting up the technical direct, right? Yeah, the death toll ticker on their taking human lives and turning it into a death toll. Anxiety, you see that going up like every moment.

They admitted to doing it because it.

Drives fear and it keeps people watching. Oh my God. He did it with his own mouth, you know? And so, and also one of the things I put into the culture very early on, I also did the counterbalancing thing, which is like, we can, I want to be informed, but we don't have to be inundated. also share the recoveries. Let's have a recovery ticker. Let's have people who are, you know, who have asymptomatic, who might have contracted the virus, but they're not sick and they're okay. Their immune system did what it was supposed to do. Let's have that ticker as well. And I put that in the culture and the person who was capturing the data, she asked him that. Like, why don't you have a recovery ticker as well?

He's like, he thought about it for a minute. He was like, well, that's not scary. It's not scary.

People won't watch.

We need to make money. That's it. We're trying to get eyeballs.

If we get down to what it's really all about and the corporate interest now, because news isn't news anymore, it's entertainment. And a lot of folks don't realize that nearly every, practically every major news station shares at least one board member with a pharmaceutical company.

It's crazy.

And the pharmaceutical industry invests billions, billions of dollars every single year into media. billions of dollars. What are they going to do? Are they going to recommend, have me on, which I've been on all the major news networks, but people aren't tuning in for that. They're not tuning in to hear me talk about drinking water and getting sleep. Man. You know what I mean? But I still do that stuff just to plant some seeds. But truly, people are tuning in to be inundated with fear, catch the sports and the weather. And he also shared that they also, 90% of the content that they do is around fear, fear-based content. But then they have a nice story. He says like at the end, and he said this was with his words, he was like to be like a little bit of ice cream at the end of the pain. Oh my God. To help to alleviate the pain, but we're about to hit you with more of it. Oh.

And this is the thing. That's why I don't watch news. Yeah. I don't watch the news. I might flip it on for a moment to be like, okay, what actually happened here? But I can't consume it for hours. Otherwise it just makes me feel sick. It makes me feel sad. depressed, frustrated. And I think I'd rather be informed and educated and be able to take action on what I need to do personally in my life, or if there's a cause I need to support from a place of mission and purpose and intention as opposed to reaction, fear, anger and reaction. And I think a lot of people have responded with reacting out of a place of fear as opposed to responding from a place of mission, love, solutions, community. And I think if we can start to shift that, we'll just feel better all in all.

This is all really pointing to one of the most important takeaways from this conversation, really just in our world today, period, is how we might think that we're controlling the way that we think. We might think that we are making decisions based on logic, but we have very primal programming as well. And we're very influenced by the world around us. We're hardwired because it's a defensive mechanism. It's helped us to get to this point. We have to be aware of threats. But the way that we live today, it's not normal threats. We're not in threat of starvation, necessarily. Psychologically in our culture. We're not in, we don't have to worry about a tiger out there. What it really is, it's a lot of manufactured fear. Not to say that there aren't real world threats. But the vast majority of people are safe. But you would never know that if you ever turn on the news. And so now here's the problem is that when we're exposed to these things, we take it with us. This was published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. And people were instructed to watch just 15 minutes of the news. And they were actually tracking their mood disturbances, tracking their metrics, And they ended up having increased levels of anxiety and mood disturbances. But that's nothing. Here it is. The most shocking part is even after distracting them with another activity after watching the news, they were not able to return to their baseline levels of mood. They picked up that anxiety, the disturbance and they took it with them. That's the thing that we don't really think about is that it really does, especially if it gets deep driven it starts to change our chemistry, it changes our biology, and it also can change our brain because we're thinking thoughts when we're seeing that stuff. How thinking and things, thoughts really get created is it's like taking something that you don't know and connecting it to something that you do know. So a fear thought, a strong fear, it's going to connect with a lot of other fear instances that you have already in your filing cabinet.

Other fears, it's going to stack.

It's going to start stacking. And this is, we tend to see this happen like we play this out in relationship context, you know, like if you get into it about one thing, it gets tied to all the other problems that you have with the person. Right. You know, like it's this, it's one of the, but we can use that for our good as well and understanding how we learn stuff. And even how I teach, I like to take something that people might be aware of and then connect it to something that is new, you know? So in Eat Smart, I take people through and teaching them how the fat loss process works by giving an analogy of going to the movies. you know what I mean? So, but on the other side, if we're not aware that this is taking place, that we're getting this exposure of fear, it's changing our neurochemistry and our perception of everything is getting, it's coloring the way that we see the world and is connecting to all the other fears that we have, not all the other fears, but other fears, especially when we're talking about imminent death, you know, for, you know, what the media perceives, the reality is very different. Now, this is something that we definitely need to be aware of, be cautious of. because even the origin of it is complicated. Like we're still, there was a time where even if you talked about the origin being other than what was disseminated in the beginning, people were getting censored and all this crazy stuff and we're not having logical, rational conversations about science. That's not science. Science is open. Science is constantly looking, and this is the key, this is going to sound absolutely nuts, and a big reason why I feel that I'm in this space at this level is because I'm willing to be wrong. Like, I'm coming into it actually, I'm coming into it. You're putting me in a wrong. Yes, I know that I have a cognitive bias. I know that I have cognitive biases towards what humans have done the longest. And so if anything comes up against that, right? So for me, it's just like, okay, well, humans have been eating real whole foods for, you know, countless, you know, centuries and you know, thousands of years and a tweet. Now we got a Twinkie, right? So it's just like, well, maybe the tweet for me, my cognitive bias is that Twinkie is probably not ideal, but I could be wrong. And I'm open because this Twinkie might, it might have unlocked some genetic, whatever dormant thing where now we're like, I don't know, we can teleport or something. I'm open to being wrong, but my bias is there. But I have to come into it with my bias and look for the ways that I'm wrong.

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Is it just me, or is it getting really hard to figure out the best way to save for retirement? Fidelity can help you find clarity so you can save the best way for you. With a free personal Personalized plan, goal tracking, and timely insights, you'll be set to take on retirement your way. Get started at fidelity.com/future. Expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account apply. Fidelity Brokerage Services member NYSC SIPC. It's hard to do, but it's like a muscle. Eventually you get to a place where, you know, it's beautiful. It's like a joyous thing. and also when you embrace that, funny enough, you don't end up being wrong as often because you're taking a meta perspective. You're looking at all the pieces. And so what I tend to share from is like, what does the majority of evidence say? And this is a big thing too, and I'm glad I get to talk to you about this and share this. Just about every single thing you can find that has peer-reviewed evidence on it, you can find something that says the opposite.

Sure. It's just like a documentary that shows like veganism is the way, and then.

It'S like, well, Only eating meat and.

Liver is the way, you know, it's like there's science on proof and evidence on both sides of the extreme.

And each person, each front person for it is going to believe wholeheartedly that their way is the right way.

They're gonna find the evidence that backs it.

And oftentimes they're not trying to be hurtful or nefarious. That's the thing. We have to come into it with a little bit more compassion. Yes. For our teachers as well. Because, and I know a lot of these guys, my friends and colleagues, but there's degrees of that, by the way. But also, they've seen the majority of time they've seen incredible results with patients they've worked with, and they're trying to save lives. And it might sound absolutely harebrained crazy to these other people over here, but that's where they're often coming from. It's coming from that place. Not to say that's 100% true, but here's the thing. I know that there's also a lot of people that are doing their thing and they're not getting the results. that the other people are getting. And this is because we're all so unique. There is no one human diet. The only thing that we know for certain is a human food is breast milk. Everything else we're just experimenting with. You know what I mean? And even, oh, this is a good segue actually because people are so, we're inundated with these ideas for example like saturated fat being so terrible for you. Human breast milk, there's a massive amount of saturated fat in breast milk. It can be upwards of 30 to 50% saturated fat.

Wow.

For building that baby's brain. Now as we get older, our gates for saturated fat from our food, like I said, we have the blood-brain barrier, the gates that allow unsaturated fat actually go down. But also breast milk has a significant amount of cholesterol also. And when there's a disruption with cholesterol synthesis for babies from their nutrition, this can lead to long-term degenerative neurological disorders. Cholesterol is incredibly important. So this gets into this conversation of these three primary fats that the brain is made of that I don't think.

A lot of people know about.

Three fats. Yeah. So we've been talking about inflammation, but the underlying thing is really looking at what are the sustainable materials that don't allow for fires to take place in the first place.

So three good fats to help Three.

Fats, these are three types of structural fats I'm going to share with you.

That, okay.

This is different from dietary fats specifically, but we can get the foundational elements from our dietary fats. Got it. So the human brain itself is primarily water, which we've got to come back and talk about this right after. It's upwards of 79% water, 80% water potentially. It's the most water dominant organ next to your lungs, all right? It is a water-based organ. All right, so water really matters. But of the dry weight of the brain, all right, so water excluded, the brain is about 60% fat. All right, we are fat heads, all right. But what's, and some people realize this, a lot of people who are the first in health and passionate about health know this already. But what people don't typically know, a very small amount of people know, what are those three fats? The number one, these are not in any particular order, but there are three. the first one I'm going to share is phospholipids.

Okay.

Phospholipids is one of the primary structural fats that the human brain is made of. Phospholipids give our brain cells shape. They give our brain cells strength. They give our brain cells elasticity.

Mm-.

All right. And these are very important characteristics. We want our brain cells to be strong and robust, to be able to handle. damage also to be able to generate and support a lot of energy. Right. We want them to be. We want them to have an adequate shape to allow the functions to happen. We don't want brain cells like our brain cells might have, you know, we've got, like, the Galileo. These are astrocytes or something. We might. Maybe we can talk about this in a minute, but we've got some cells in the brain that might look like this, like, star shape. But then this brain cell over here is like, I don't know, looking like an M&M and it's just not. a peanut M&M. It's just like not matching up to the structure that would create robust health. And then also the elasticity. We want the brain cells to be adaptable. And so phospholipids help to support something called signal transduction, which is the brain cells being able to talk to each other, which is kind of important. So phospholipids. Now, phospholipids. What are the foods that support? Sure, sure. I'll share that. But I want to share one specific thing because dietarily speaking, bringing in from our diet phospholipids, there's a randomized double-blind placebo controlled study, and I map it out in Eat Smarter. This is like a gold standard of clinical trials because we got a specific implement and we're seeing what happens. Randomized double-blind placebo controlled study found that the inclusion of phospholipids helped to improve attention and reaction time when people were under stress. So they put them under acute stress and phospholipids help them to perform better. So they had, they noted subjectively also reduced participation anxiety, right, with the inclusion of phospholipids. So this is some really cool stuff. So, but these are structural fats that the brain is actually made of. Where do we get them? Phospholipids are made primarily out of omega-3 DHA and EPA, all right, and I'll talk about that in a second. But we can also get them directly from certain foods. you're going to find them in fatty fish, you're going to find them in egg yolks, you're going to find them in oats, you're going to find them in foods like spirulina, you're going to find them in, you know, fatty cuts of just different fatty type foods as well. So fatty cuts of, of, of things like beef, for beef, for example, if it's grass-fed and I don't want to get into a place of, like, what's better, you know, a plant plant version or animal version. I'm just sharing where you can find these phospholipids.

Nuts as well or no?

Yeah, certain nuts, also soybeans. And for some people, soy is going to be like the absolute Joker or Thanos of this situation. It just depends on the... I'm just sharing where they are. And please understand, even with the conversation of soy, I did a full description and breakdown of the science around soy in the book. what we're, what we've done with soy is not what's been done traditionally. You know, people never ate soy dogs, soy ice cream, soy sandwich slices, soy nuggets, all of that. All of this heavily refined processed soy is more used in cultures, you know, if you look at, you know, Okinawa, for example, you know, as a little bit more of a condiment in a sense, you know, like used to make various things. Yeah. But oftentimes also is, it was fermented whenever it was used primarily too. So that's a whole other conversation. So phospholipids is one. Phospholipids. But these are some dietary sources you can directly get phospholipids. But as I mentioned, they're primarily made of EPA and DHA. These are two types, docosahexaenoic acid and then eicosapentaenoic acid. So DHA and EPA. Okay, cool. Okay. And so DHA and EPA are two of the most important these are two of the most important, like today I want people to proactively get yourself an EPA and DHA supplement, specifically DHA.

It's that important for you.

The reason for this, dude, listen to this. And again, working with Daniel Amen over the years and gleaning some of this information, but the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had folks that include some DHA supplementation. And just within a matter of months, they dramatically improved their memory, explicit memory, so like remembering you know, events and things like that, and also they were able to improve their reaction time just by increasing the DHA. Now here's the other part. In the journal Neurology, they used MRIs to actually look at the brain and they found that people who had the lowest intake of DHA and EPA had the highest rate of brain shrinkage.

Oh man.

All right, so what they found the number is less than four grams a day was associated with accelerated brain shrinkage. Okay, six grams and up had the most shrink proof brain. So, DHA, EPA specifically. So, where do you get that? Fatty fish, salmon, salmon roe, but also with phospholipid, same thing, eggs, egg yolks. And I learned this from Lisa Mosconi, neuroscientist. Again, I love her because she's looking at the brain. And not just like guessing, but she shared with me that In the egg yolk itself, there's 10,000 milligrams of phospholipids per 100 gram of product. It's the most power-packed source of phospholipids. But then also she shared with me that DHA and EPA, you're gonna find far more in the fish eggs than in the fish itself.

Caviar, right?

Caviar, salmon roe. So it's not again, this is not to say to go out and drop a heavy buck on some caviar and be like, I don't know, Lifestyles of.

The Rich and Famous.

But for some people, that might, that might be the thing.

That's the phospholipids.

What's number two? So EPA DHA. So fatty fish, salmon, mackerel, sardines. Gotcha.

We've got.

Well, EPA DHA is two. Right.

And phospholipids, too.

I thought it was one. Okay, so one. DHA and EPA make phospholipids. Gotcha. Gotcha. We can also get that from our diet. Okay, cool. So. And I'll just rattle off a couple of other ones for the for lipids because it's important. Also for folks that are vegan, we've got to include everybody. Yes. So from there, most of the peer-reviewed studies are done using fish oil. Now, there's a little bit of controversy there, but I just want to make that clear that most of these studies are done using fish oil. So we can also, from here, krill oil.

Yeah, that's good.

K-R-I-L-L krill oil. That might be a viable option for folks that might be on that borderline with vegetarian. And it's a microscopic, keyword microscopic shrimp. This is what whales are consuming, for example, to create their massive brains. But the reason krill oil can be so remarkable is that it's high in astaxanthin, which helps protect the DHA and EPA and keep it from oxidizing. So it's really bioavailable and we have peer-reviewed evidence that it works. the step from there that's truly vegan is an algae oil. So at minimum, I want folks to get that like today. Because again, if you're not getting in DHA and EPA, your brain is going to have accelerated shrinkage.

Oh man.

All right. It is that important for the structural integrity of our brain.

Got it.

When I was running my clinical practice, I knew how important omega-3s were. We'll just say 15 years ago. 15 years ago. People are coming in. I'm getting everybody on chia seed oil, flax seed oil, hemp seed oil. I'm getting like, you've got to get these Omega-3s in everybody. I was missing part of the story. That is ALA. It's not DHA and EPA. It's a plant version. It's not the structural components of the brain. Okay. But it's so important. Your brain can. Your body can convert some ALA into EPA and DHA, but you can lose upwards of 90, 95 of the conversion. process. So you're gonna have to be shoveling chia seeds and hemp seeds all day to meet your needs and it's just not viable. Yeah, yeah, okay. So this is why algae oil is so important. And of course, I love chia seeds and flax seeds, all that stuff. You can add that stuff in, but don't be mistaken that it's the same thing as DHA. Okay. Because it's not. So that's number one is these phospholipids and number two I want to share with everybody is something called sphingolipids.

How do you spell that?

That's S-P-H-I-N-G-O-Lipids. Lipids, got it. P-I-D-S. Okay. So, it's the second part, the second.

Fatty part of the cell.

Second type of primary fats found in the human brain.

Okay.

So, we've got phospholipids, sphingolipids. Sphingolipids really function as building blocks for our cell membranes, okay? So, this is the membrane around all of our cells. By the way, this isn't just for our brain. It's also our entire physiology. These are important, but primarily for the brain, especially for the brain. Let me say that. So, the sell membrane, if we go back to biology class, which I hated by the way, I was not passionate about science until I had to figure stuff out for myself. But we're taught that the nucleus is the brain of the cell. This is where all the where all the intelligence is. But working with cell biologist Bruce Lipton, Dr. Bruce Lipton, who's like the person who really impressed epigenetics into popular culture, he shared with me very early on that in his lab he was just doing, he was removing the nucleus from cells and the cells just keep doing stuff. They keep operating, they do a lot of their same functions without their so-called brain, right? So it's called enucleation. So if that's the brain of the cell, why does the cell not die? If I take your brain out, you're dead. That's it. That's the end of Lewis's story. You know what I mean? So it's not as cut and dry. The membrane, it's brain in the name a little bit, but the membrane has a lot of intelligence and it's working and constantly assessing the environment and sending data to the rest of the body. I mean, the rest of the cell, all the internal mechanisms. so there's a lot of intelligence in that membrane. And that membrane, a big part of that is Spingolipids. All right.

Okay.

So now here's where this plays out. Spingolipids can literally change the architecture of the cell, of the brain cell. So what that means and why that is important is what it can help. It can adjust the cell so that it can do things a different way. And that's important. Like, what if you need to. what if you have an injury? How does your brain come back? Your brain can find another way. It can adjust because of sphingolipids are a big component of helping to adjust the architecture for the brain cells to still do processes. All right, so that's sphingolipids. The other big role that they play is in actually cancer prevention because they're regulating cell replication. So cells are supposed to replicate to the Hayflick limit is kind of one of the the ways that we look at it. But cancer cells go replicating indefinitely. So, sphingolipids help to regulate and check cell growth and in particular we're talking about in the brain. So, thank you sphingolipids for that. There you go.

Okay. All right.

So, that's the second type. But sphingolipids also help to make oh, dietary sources. Eggs, butter, yogurt, eggs again, man. Eggs are there again. Cream, beef, funny enough, rice and sweet potatoes as well, have some interesting amounts of sphingolipids. All right, so those are a few sources dietarily. But sphingolipids are used to make something called sphingomyelin. Now this is going to be important for you as an athlete, or I'm about to talk about now. So sphingomyelin, so myelin is the protective sheath around our nerve transmissions. So what that means is, as we do a behavior, right? So the first time that you throw the handball, right? There's a certain way that you did that and over time you got better and better and became more automatic where you can do it from all these crazy angles. You could do it diving, you could do it behind your, you know, between your legs and all the flossy stuff that you do. But the thing is, over time, more as you're doing the thing, More and more myelin is getting laid down over that nerve transmission, basically insulating it and making it fire faster. Alright, so this is how Steph Curry, for example, the first time he's shooting a basketball versus what he can do today, he's laid down more myelin where the nerve transmission is automatic and he can do it from all these different anytime, anywhere, right? So same thing with swinging a golf club. It's not practice makes perfect, it's practice makes permanent. All right, so the more you're doing this thing, you're laying down more myelin. All right. So it's really, really important for everything, not just for athletic performance, but everything that we do. Sure. Spingolipids help to make spingomyelin, but myelin is combined. The spingomyelin works with the other, the third type of fat that the brain is primarily made of, which is cholesterol. Wow.

All right.

So cholesterol is the third one. Okay. And this is another. Of the brain. Yes. It's another dirty word apparently in nutrition. unfortunately, because things have become so black and white. But cholesterol is so important for the brain that the brain actually makes it itself. The brain is the most concentrated area of cholesterol anywhere else in our body. About 20% of our cholesterol is located in our brain. It's just making it on demand because it's so important. And cholesterol is actually, if we, for me, I'm like, well, how the hell does the brain do it? If it's making its own cholesterol, how does it do it? It's the astrocytes. I briefly mentioned them earlier. They're these star-shaped glial cells and they can be connected to like 2 million different synapses for different neurons and just they're making some magical stuff happen. But anyways, with these astrocytes, they're one of the places that we believe are primarily making cholesterol for the brain because it's so important. And so obviously building blocks of cholesterol we can get from our food, but as I mentioned, your brain is primarily making it itself. Why does this matter? Last piece is cholesterol is a big component is primarily working with your myelin. And if you're not, this is also seen in like MS, for example. There's issues there with the myelin sheath, right? So this can lead to different health issues, but also can improve our performance when we have the building blocks to make these compounds. So I know this was a lot, but just understanding these different three types of how important they are for making up our brain, our brain is made of this stuff. We got to get out of the politics about which food is better than other, what dietary framework, and just look at what have humans been doing the longest? What does our brain require? What are the foundational elements for that? And just focus on what's best for us. Experiment, have fun, share, teach, have a good time, and let's get our families healthier.

Oh man, a lot of information here. and you have even more in your book, Eat Smarter. Use the power of food to reboot your metabolism, upgrade your brain and transform your life. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this. There's more in stock now. We as a community, everyone sold out on them quickly. We bought them, so you got to make sure you guys buy a couple more of these. If you want recipes, if you want the research, the science, everything, if you want to learn the guacamole that I had and enjoyed for the first time in my life, it's in here. It's amazing. Lots of good stuff in here. So thank you for putting this. We're gonna have to give you some of these notes that I can put in the description on YouTube as well so that people have the kind of the footnotes for all this stuff. So I have a lot more questions, but I think this is a lot to digest for people. So we'll leave you guys with this unless there's anything else you wanted to add here for this interview.

I mean, the big thing for me is, you know, I'm so grateful for you, man. Like, if people who haven't had the chance to actually hang out with you and to, you know, to eat guacamole together. Like you are the real deal, man. Thank you, man. You're such a great human being, you know, with the biggest heart. And the thing that I admire most about you is that, you know, you're passionate about learning and connecting. You are the most incredible connector of humans that I've ever met as well. So many great people in my life because of you. And being here with you today, for me, it's just a big part of the mission that we both have, which is to get people feeling empowered. Absolutely. Right now, when there's so much information that is disempowering and help to not just balance it out, but to create a tipping point to where we can really become healthier as a culture where it's not the exception, it's the rule. And I believe that we can do that in our lifetime. It starts with us. The education is one thing, but it's finding a way to fall in love with it. Finding that thing that connects with you. It might be through food, that might be a bridge, it might be through dance, it might be through handball. It might be through, you know, it might be through sleep. Maybe you got a passion, like you found a passion for sleep, but we've got to find a bridge to get our citizens healthier because truly, we, right now, we're, we're the sickest society in recent human history. And we're also, with all of our advances, this should not be the case, you know, but what it really is, is just creating the bridge for people to get educated, to feel empowered and to make this the norm. So I just want to ask everybody to make sure that they take something and apply it. We don't want to just be human filing cabinets. And also share what you learn with somebody else. Look out for somebody. Give them a word of encouragement. We can use that more than ever today.

Absolutely. And I think the greatest thing you can do is be the example for the people around you by setting the example for yourself. How you show up, how you change your habits, how you change the way you think, the way you talk, the way you take care of your health, the food choices, the activities you take on. Doing that will inspire people around you to start asking questions. Hey, you look like your energy is different. You're more magnetic. So start attracting people by your example. I think that's a great way and make this the standard, not, you know, what is it? 60, 70% is obese right now. It's like, how do we, let's get that to 50% and then let's get it even more. That would be incredible if we could reverse this, I guess this, what is this? What do you call this? An epidemic?

Multiple epidemics under one umbrella.

Chronic diseases, obesity, fear, all this stuff, right? It's just like, if we can reverse some of these things.

We're so much better than this. We are. We're so much bigger than this. We are. But we have to realize it.

Is it just laziness, you think? I feel like we know eat better. Like, don't eat this, we should eat this, work out. I feel like people understand that. Do you think it's laziness?

Isn't that word is very inflammatory. Even that word is inflammatory. because absolutely can be a component. But where does this come from? It's the low energy from the way that we eat. It's the low energy from the lack of movement. It's the low energy from the messages we're taking in. There's so much right now that is unfortunately designed to keep us in that low energy state. People know about this. There's been big movements now towards having a better relationship with social media. There's films like the social dilemma, for example. and demonstrating how people are behind the scenes working to control you and keep you distracted from being your greatest self.

That's crazy.

So we can't just say it's this one small thing. It's really a societal issue. Yeah. And we have to still goes back to empowerment because people, we tend to think that we are making the decision about being on our phone, for example, all day, you know? But in reality, there are forces that are working to keep you separate from your.

There are some influences for sure. So you gotta You got to protect your mind, protect your habits and everything. Make sure you guys get a copy of this, get a few copies, give it to some friends, spread the message of health, wellness, all the good stuff. Eat smarter. Sean, you shared your three truths in the previous episodes. If you guys want to see Sean's three truths, check it out there. But before I ask your definition of greatness, I want to acknowledge you for constantly showing up, man. You're one of the most dedicated researchers I know in this space. Constantly obsessing over the research, the science, finding the holes and the information out there and then giving us the answers. So this thing is chalked with pages of cliff notes at the end with all the research as well, citations and everything. So make sure you guys check this out again. Appreciate you for always showing up, man, and being a, you know, being a representation of the way your background, the way you look, your attitude, and how you can kind of attract more people to this information as well. So Appreciate you. My final question, what's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is just going off of what you just said, being the model, you know, being the example. The greatest example that you can give, the greatest way to teach is being it.

Absolutely.

You know, because when you walk into a room, you are a demonstration, you change that energy in the room that you walk in, as we talked about earlier with that tube Taurus, you know, so being the model and you can help to uplift and bring a light into dark places, you know? And also, as we grow ourselves, we become less influenced by the negativity around us as well. I know you've noticed that in your evolution, too, you know, so you can really become impermeable to a lot of the craziness that's going on. So really work on yourself, build yourself up, become the best version of you, and let that speak and speak volumes of you before you even step on the scene. So that's, for me, that's the, that's the the definition of greatness is being the model, being the example, and also accepting that you don't have to be perfect in being that example. Just be in process. Just be working towards getting better. Because there's always going to be somebody who is at a more trying place than you are right now. So just being that example, because just one person, if you're just five steps ahead of somebody with your health, you can help and reach a hand back and lift that person up.

That'S it, my man. Make sure you guys get the book. Check out the Model Health Show, YouTube, podcast, social media. We'll have a link down below. Sean, my man. Appreciate you, bro. Thanks, man. Love you, bro. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Again, if you enjoyed it, please spread the message of greatness to a few friends. Just text a few friends right now. This link, lewishouse.com/1141 or copy and paste the link on the podcast platform that you are listening to and get the word out there so we can help more people improve the quality of their life. If this is your first time here, please click the subscribe button right now so you can stay up to date and notified from some of the biggest interviews and topics and conversations on how to help you achieve greatness in your life right here on the School of Greatness. Click that subscribe button, leave a review. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you enjoyed from this episode. So leave us a review over on Apple podcast and you can subscribe on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcast. as well. And I want to leave you with this quote from Tony Robbins, who said, the higher your energy level, the more efficient your body, the more efficient your body, the better you feel, and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results. If you're listening and you're subscribed to this show and you want to learn how to achieve greatness, you want to produce more outstanding results in your life and whatever that looks like for you. And that's what this is all about, optimizing your first so you can have more energy, more Focus, more Clarity, less distractions, less stress, less anxiety, and really have an optimal life. And that's what we're all here to do, is have that Joy, that fulfillment, that love that we all seek to have on a consistent basis. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are so loved, you are worthy and you matter, and I'm grateful for you for being here today. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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