The 4 Daily Hacks To Get In The Best Shape Mashup EP 1230

This is episode number 1230 on the best Daily Health Hacks. 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. Being in good health is the most valuable thing you can prioritize for yourself and your family. If you're able to create a healthy lifestyle instead of just trying a new trend or diet, then you are setting yourself up for a lot of long term success. And I interview a lot of different health experts on the show, so I wanted to put together an episode with some of the best ways to begin taking back control of your health from these experts. In this episode we discuss how to change your habits and the most effective way to burn fat with Mark Sisson, how to instantly improve your sleep with Shawn Stevenson, the foods you need to start eating with Dr. Lissa Moscone, the benefits of fasting with Dr. Alan Goldhamer, and so much more. If you're enjoying this, make sure to spread this with someone that you think wants to live a happier, healthier, longer life as well. Just copy and paste this link lewishouse.com 12:30 and share it with people on social media, text them or post it on your groups on social media as well. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here or you've been listening for a while but you haven't yet subscribed yet, make sure to click the subscribe button right now on Apple Podcast and leave us a review and a rating over on Apple Podcasts letting us know what you enjoyed most about this episode or previous episodes on this show. And I want to give a shout out to the Fan of the Week from Haley who who left a review over on Apple Podcast saying as a college student I believe these episodes can be applied to everyone's lives. This is one of my favorite go to podcasts to gain motivation for the week and start the day with a growth oriented mindset. So big thank you to Hayley for being a subscriber, being a fan and leaving a review. And in just a moment it's time to learn how to take control of of your health. The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live. And with SiriusXM every drive comes alive bringing you closer to the music, the sports talk and podcasts that you love right in your vehicle or on the SirusXM app. Every SiriusXM equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three month trial so the experience begins the moment you drive. Learn more@kia.com Sportage Hybrid Kia Movement that inspires this message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com the School of Greatness is sponsored by Capital One. Nowadays, most people subscribe to everything music, tv, even dog food. And it rocks until you have to manage it all. Which is where Capital One comes in. Capital One Credit cardholder can easily track, block or cancel reoccurring charges right from the Capital One mobile app at no additional cost. With one sign in, you can manage all your subscriptions all in one place. Learn more at Capital1.comsubscriptions Terms and Conditions apply. In this first section, bestselling fitness author and entrepreneur Mark Sisson shares how to begin changing your behavior when it comes to having a healthy lifestyle, and he breaks down the most effective ways to burn fat. I just want to dive into what this philosophy is and how you actually live.

My main goal is to live awesome. That's the tagline, that's the motto of our company, Primal Blueprint. Live awesome. And what does that mean? It means extracting the greatest amount of pleasure, enjoyment, contentment, fulfillment that's possible out of every possible moment. Now, there are going to be bad times, of course, but to live in the moment, to appreciate the now, to appreciate the relationships, to have fun when you're working out, to enjoy every single bite of food you ever eat, choke something down just because it's healthy. It really revolves around orchestrating a lifeway of pleasure, of hedonistic experiences in the context of this modern world that we have here. Understanding that we sit here with hunter gatherer genes that have certain proclivities and expectations of us that we can meet either through natural means or through artificial means. And sometimes there's not a right answer. But it's about choices. So how do I make choices that serve me in the short term, that give me pleasure, that don't harm me in the long term? Hmm. So it's sort of an overview of what we're up against here. But, you know, as you drill down, as you boil it down and distill it down to what does it look like? It looks like, you know, what are the types of foods that we choose to eat that turn on genes that build muscle or burn fat? You know, how much sun exposure do we get that allows us to make vitamin D and get tan, but not too much, so we get burned? How much sleep do we get? That. And by the way, sleep is a very pleasurable thing if you. If you are willing to acknowledge that. How much sleep do we get? In a way that. That reinvigorates us and allows us to. To be creative on a daily basis and not brag about how well we do on so little sleep, you know, so all these, you know, how do we use our brain on a regular basis beyond just the rote stuff of, you know, checking the PDAs? But how do we do puzzles? Do we play games? Do we, you know, do we do. Are we creative? Do we play musical instruments? Do we learn a language? How do we use our brain? All these things make the totality of the human experience. And I love to look at all the ways in which we can choose these behaviors that manifest themselves as pleasurable, enjoyable, providing contentment and fulfillment and build us toward a better human being.

When did you start to take this on? You know, because you were a triathlete?

Yeah, I was a marathoner in the. In the 70s. Wow. And actually the late 60s and early 70s. Wow. And from there, went to triathlon. I was always trying to improve myself, optimize performance. Optimize performance using the tools of the day, which were pretty rudimentary. It's like, all right, run a lot of miles and eat lots of carbohydrates, and you'll be. You'll be where you need to be. Well, you know, that's what. That's what we knew. That's all we knew. And it wasn't exactly appropriate. So over the years, I got injured. I got sick from the overtraining, from the diet, which was very highly inflammatory.

And caused pastas and breads or what.

All that stuff that they said you had to eat.

I mean, I had so many pasta meals and pizza meals and lasagna meals the night before every game. And I remember just being so exhausted and every game, high school, college pro. It's just like exhaustion, right? Yawning. I would yawn.

That's.

That's a classic.

Why am I Yawning.

Right. I'm supposed to be excited about the game.

I wanted to take a nap.

Take a nap, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So.

So we have these sort of old conventional wisdom technologies that we were using to improve performance theoretically, and they weren't. So I basically ended my career early, prematurely. I was too injured to continue running. My health had suffered. I had, you know, arthritis and tendonitis and irritable bowel syndrome, and I got sick a lot and I had heartburn and hemorrhoids and I was like a real wreck. I mean, here's theoretically the picture of health because of the training I was doing, but I was falling apart on the inside. So I sort of rededicated my life to figuring out how I could be fit and strong and lean and happy and healthy at the same time without being, you know, without too much struggle and sacrifice and suffering. You know, is there an easy way, an easier way to be all those things I wanted to be that, that allowed me to have more pleasure in the moment and didn't sacrifice my long term health. So that's, that was the big shift in me, and that's been going on for 35 years and it continues to go on. So I, as soon as I made that shift, I started doing the research. I started. I mean, I wrote my first book in 82, how to How to Train for Triathlons. Even then, I was calling upon evolution as the main basis for how we train. And I was looking at the previous few years of triathletes because in 82, there hadn't even been a decade of triathlon training. But I already recognized that we were doing it wrong. We were training too hard.

We were too many miles, too many.

Too many miles, too much redlining the heart and the body. And there was a better way and an easier way to do it. So I started recognizing that back in 82. And then even up until three years ago when I started researching the Primal Endurance book, I started thinking, well, you know, all of the science continues to show us that the old choice was probably a wrong choice. That reliance on carbohydrates and that that intent of, of managing our glycogen stores in our muscles was kind of the wrong approach. And maybe we ought to come at it from the exact opposite end of the spectrum, which is how do we become really good at burning fat and in so doing, spare glycogen and in so doing, unburden ourselves of having to take in so much carbohydrate in the form of pasta and breads? And cereals and rice and crackers and cookies and all the other stuff.

Sure, sure. And you're. You're 62, right?

Yeah.

Right.

And you're like, leaner than anyone I know. So what's the most effective way to burn fat? Still be strong?

Yeah, of course, 80% of your body composition is determined by how you eat. So if you. There's a certain way in which you can eat where you can literally reprogram your genes to derive most of your energy from your stored body fat. Really? Yes. So as opposed to waking up, being hungry, having breakfast, being hungry at the 10:30 break, being hungry for lunch, having a snack in the afternoon, having a dinner and having a snack before you go to bed, which is the sort of standard American approach, like even the old bodybuilders would say, don't go more than three hours without eating or you will cannibalize your muscle tissue.

Right.

That was all based on an assumption that we had to burn carbohydrate, had to. Had to access glucose and glycogen for the muscles to be able to continue to work. It never contemplated that we are obligate fat burners. We are born with this amazing ability to extract calories from stored body fat. And the reason that we don't, as we go through life is we. You know, you're two years old, you're eating cookies and crackers, mushed peas and.

Ice cream, all that stuff.

And so your body learns to depend on glucose, on carbohydrates as a source of energy, and never really gets to the point where you force it to burn fat. So what we do is we. We shift the diet around. It's not painful. You get rid of the breads, the pastas, the cereals, the crackers, the cookies, the candies, the sweetened soft drinks. Well, it does sound kind of, doesn't it? But what you're left with is meat, fish, fowl, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables, a little bit of fruit, some starchy tubers, like sweet potatoes, things like that. Those are great tasting foods if you eat them right. And they're real food, and they're real food. And you can use butter and lard and, and you can eat bacon on this, on this program. And what it does is it reduces the amount of simple sugars and carbohydrates you take in and just sort of forces, gently forces your body to upregulate all the enzyme systems that access stored body fat and burn it and allow you to have more energy throughout the day without having to eat so often. So the first thing that happens is your appetite self regulates. So now you, you get into the space where you become a good fat burner, you start to melt away. You're not as hungry because you're not. And you're not as hungry because you're always carrying around a meal. It's on your thighs, it's on your ass, it's on your belly. Wherever it is, it's, you know, that's your body becomes so adept at accessing those stored calories. It says, I don't need to eat, I'm really not that hungry. Yeah. And that's so empowering for so many people.

But when you, you know, I was a still love sugar, but I used to be really bad at sugar. I feel like I have much more under control. But I feel like when you're eating a lot of candy, sweets and sugar, you're never satisfied. You just want to eat more and more and more.

But that's until you're sick.

No, exactly, I'm full because I'm sick now.

Yeah, I mean, stories of Lamar Odom eating four pounds of candy before games or whatever. Yeah, but I mean we are, look.

We'Re all hired, look where he's at now. You know, it's like we're all.

But by the way, sugar is a very addictive substance.

It's so addictive.

So, you know, we're all hardwired to seek out sweet things. That's part of that hunter gatherer DNA that we all carry. That hasn't changed in thousands of years.

So how do we shift our minds?

So you, the first way you do it is you go from the craving, which is what you're talking about. Like you crave sugar, so you eat sugar and then that just promotes more craving and it gets you into this sort of addictive cycle. You're actually producing sort of opiate like substances that are occupying receptor sites that are giving you sort of a feel good experience. So you got to kind of be willing to, to get rid of that. So you get rid of the candies, you get rid of the sweetened beverages, soft drinks and teas, and you get rid of the carbohydrates that not all carbs, but the breads that convert to glucose, the bloodstream so rapidly. So now you've lowered your blood, your glucose experience on a daily basis. So now the brain is starting to get. Yeah, I don't need to really get that much glucose. The body is burning more fat as a result of you being able to burn fat. You Create these byproducts called ketones, which the brain loves to burn ketones and burns them preferentially. So you need less and less sugar to maintain clarity throughout the day. If you haven't become fat adapted and you're a sugar burner, which is what we. It's not a derogatory term, but we use a term to describe people who haven't become fat burners yet. They're sugar burners. It's true. If you don't eat for a couple of hours, your blood sugar dips because you haven't learned how to burn fat yet. You don't know how to access it. You can't take it out of storage and burn it. So now the blood sugar's low, the brain goes, I got to go get some more glucose. I got to get energy somewhere.

Sugar or something.

Sugar or something. So you have the bagel at 10:30 in the morning. Oh, my gosh. Or you have.

Tastes amazing. Well, for an hour and then it's.

No, exactly. But then you're hungry again. And that's the. And that's this vicious cycle. So if we can take the steps we say it takes 21 days. That's why I have a book called the 21 Day Total Body Transformation. 21 Days of Cutting these sugars and simple carbohydrates out of your diet and just focusing on healthy fats and lean proteins and vegetables. Your body gets the message and says, I'm not going to be getting that much glucose. I'm going to learn how to burn fat and I'm going to do it. Well, damn it. And then it takes the fat out of your body fat stores. So over time, you lose a pound, two pounds a week, and you trend toward your ideal body composition. All of this is a 10 minute long winded answer to your question of how, you know, what does it take to, you know, to burn fat? It doesn't take a lot of exercise. It mostly takes the dietary shift.

Right?

Yeah. You got to do some exercise. You don't have to do anything, but you can choose to do some exercise and it'll help accelerate it a little bit. But most of it happens as a result. Really shifts you make in your diet. Absolutely.

It's all in the kitchen.

Yep.

So you can get abs in the kitchen and not do anything different working.

Absolutely.

Wow.

Yeah.

Okay, so what's the difference between. Because it sounds like a little Paleo. Ish. What's the difference between Primal Paleo and like a bulletproof, which has kind of been picking up as well.

You know, they're all sort of versions of a similar theme, which is to cut the sugars way down, cut the processed carbohydrates way down, get rid of the industrial seed oil. So that would be the soybean oil, the corn oil, the canola, which are causing inflammatory responses in a lot of people and just kind of go to real food. You know, dairy, if you like it, why not include it in your diet if you don't have an issue with it? But all these foods exist on a spectrum. So dairy, you know, there's raw milk, which is good for you. There's a 2 protein which is a form of casein. We could have a whole discussion about the different types of cows and the different types of protein that they make. But on the far end of the spectrum, the good end, there's butter, there's cream, there's all these things at the other end, at the bad end, there's 2%, skim, homogenized, pasteurized, non fat, whatever. Stay away from that stuff. So all these foods sort of exist on a spectrum. So cheeses, for instance, part of the dairy family. I love cheese.

I love cheese.

So you know, we include it in our eating strategy because we say there's no real reason not to.

In this section, best selling author of Sleep Smarter, Shawn Stevenson breaks down the different practices to improve your sleep. Sleep is an underrated part of a healthy lifestyle that most people put off the as the least important. So don't be that person. Listen up here. Tell me about why is it important to have sunlight?

Awesome. Yes. 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 the anti cancer, it's a.

Precursor to that, 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. All right? So it helps to keep your cortisol lower in the evening if you get sunlight during the day, which will elevate your cortisol. Okay. And cortisol, melatonin have basically an inverse relationship. So when cortisol is high, melatonin is low.

Right.

When melatonin is high, cortisol is low. So it helps to get that on track again. 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, photo aging of the skin and skin cancer, things like that. And I actually talk about in the book and kind of demystify 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 photoreceptor, 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, and 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.

Sunbathing in a tanning salon.

Or not, that actually does work if it's the right light. 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. We want to be proactive with this, but understand it's not just the exposure on your skin. Skin is what I'm talking about. Your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light, but just the exposure in your. 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, that was the first one. The second one, avoid screens before bedtime. And I think this is something that a lot of us are at a fault with.

I know. You kissing that phone good night.

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. The toughest one of the. 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. It's. Dopamine is all about seeking. It's driving you to seek. 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 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 Rissler Polytechnic that found that just two hours of your device usage before bed was enough to suppress melatonin secretion. All right, so again, wow, you can pass out 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.

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Quints.comlewis and it's this blue spectrum of light that's shooting out, kind of pouring into your optical sensor.

What if you can stop that spectrum?

Is there shades?

Is there screen protectors? Is there glasses?

There's all of those things.

So now is that okay then if.

You have the hat, it's a hack.

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

Yes. So absolutely everybody today can get flux f dot lux, which basically cools off your screen. You know, pulls off that.

Do you have that?

Troublesome. Of course. So I've got all my.

See what it looks like or is it just like I don't have a film that's like 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.

I got to get this.

Oh yeah. And it does this automatically based on your time zone.

Oh wow.

And the time of year, all. All that stuff.

Amazing.

So it pulls out that most troublesome spectrum of light. And so 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. Watch TV or something, you know, like if you're gonna stay up late and watch a 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 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 connect. Real people, you know, something like that.

Yeah.

You know, playing games with your. With your kids, talking to your family, have sex. You know, 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 don't have that much caffeine and I. I almost never drink coffee. Except for about a month ago, I started doing some intermittent fasting testing and so I'll have bulletproof in the morning. Yeah, it's like. What time is it? It's almost 2 o'. Clock. I still haven't eaten today. 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.

Yeah.

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 said it perfectly. You can definitely go to sleep, but your nervous system can still be active because caffeine has something called. 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. Because of the caffeine. And then there was the subjective. So there's the 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. 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 either way, too. Yeah, before noon 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 book of how to.

How to make that.

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 this power and importance of sleep. And that's. Be cool.

Yeah.

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. But St. Louis is the same as Ohio.

Yes.

And, man, it was miserable.

Speaking my language.

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. 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. So you got to understand the importance of being cool. But what is it? 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, the top of the freaking house. You know, heat rises, coolness drops. So this is why our basements are tend to be cooler.

Yeah.

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 and 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 thermoregulation. And it does this every night. And we'll just say around 9pm average, it does this process to lower your core body temperature to create the ideal environment for deep sleep. Yeah. Your body cools you off to sleep better. Right. So you want to support it and not work against it. So here's some simple tips and it's gonna 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. Wow. For sleeping. All right. And some people like two. 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 know, you're at the top, you're in 68, 69.

Like 60, 69, you know, but. And also, you know, 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 was 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 right on.

Top of the mattress?

Yeah, underneath the sheet.

Exactly.

But it just keeps you cool underneath you.

Yeah, it's been a game changer for, for him, you know. So just cooling your body temperature.

Yeah.

Even just one degree difference, it's huge. It's huge. It's huge.

Okay, cool. So be cool at night. You can still, you know, you can still wrap yourself blanket, but keep the room cool. Yeah, gotcha. I like that. Okay, so that was number four. Number five, get to bed at the right time. So why. Why is it important to be at the right time? Yeah. 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 quote, money time sleep is between 10pm and 2am and why that is is that this is when you're gonna get your greatest increase of melatonin, which is gonna help you to go through your normal sleep cycle. And. And the greatest secretion of things like human growth hormone as well. So more recovery, more anabolic growth and development between 10 and 2am that's right, yeah.

Is when you should be going to sleep, or that's when you get optimal sleep.

Right.

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

So.

So if you go to bed at 9, 39, 45.

Yeah.

And you're, you know, asleep in that window that whole time, that's the optimal time.

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

Right?

You know, I see your face, you're 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. Our genes are expecting a night cycle for us to get cozy, to get sleep. But we can 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, a hundred years ago, let alone thousands.

In this section, neuroscientist Dr. Lissa Moscone shares the different foods you should avoid and the foods you should eat in order to optimize your brain health. You know, the more you've studied brain foods and the functionality of optimizing your brain and, you know, living longer and having the function of your brain, what would you shy away from? What would you say? You know, what that's probably the worst thing for your brain to have functionality and to function longer and live longer with your brain health. What are the main foods you would absolutely never touch? You never give your family or your kids because you just feel like it's very harmful.

Processed foods and any, any processed foods? No, we, we don't eat. I don't eat processed foods. I, I really try to stick to whole foods.

So does that include like, that's a cooking pastries.

I was just thinking, oh my goodness, this is maybe not true. I, I do eat crackers occasionally, but I'm, we really, I really don't eat a lot of processed foods and they're mostly minimally processed. My dosha really loves these peanut butter covered banana bites, so I buy those. But I wouldn't call it a processed food. I mean it's not fresh from the plant, but it's certainly not burgers or hot dogs or popcorn. And it's just frozen pizza. I don't eat that.

What does processed foods do to brain health?

There is a lot of research showing that the standard American diet or the SAD diet is really, really. Yeah, it's really, really bad news for your brain. And we have seen this many times using brain scans. We published this time and time again. Then, this may sound biased, but we were using a Mediterranean style pattern as an example of a healthy diet, which is what scientists would tell you. Most scientists really endorse a Mediterranean style diet as a healthy is a brain healthy diet. And we were comparing the brain scans of people in the Mediterranean diet to those of people of the same exact age, educational level on a Western diet or on a standard American diet. You could see the difference just by looking at the brains.

What do the brains look like on the Mediterranean diet versus I wish I could show you the sad American processed diet. Is it just like it's lit up more? It's more rich looking? What is the difference?

Yeah, so the difference is that the brains of people on the Western diet look older. Just picture that in your mind if you can. And the brain of a 50 year old person on a Mediterranean style diet looks very full. There's very. The brain is, is composed of three different parts, but mostly just two parts. There's brain and then there's fluid inside your hand. You want to have as much brain as you can and as little fluid as you can. I mean, you want to have some fluid because it's protective, but not too much. You have more fluid and less brain. It means your brain is shrinking like you're Losing neuron and fluid is taking over the space.

Oh, my gosh.

If you compare the brain scans, you can tell that people on Western diets show brain shrinkage already in midlife, and that continues over time. And worse than that, and we have published this, the Western diet is associated with the emergence of Alzheimer's plaques already in midlife. So people on Mediterranean diets are basically zero plaques, at least in our. In our hands.

What do you mean by plaques? What does that mean?

Alzheimer's plaques. So Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia in the population, is characterized by presence of these plaques.

Plaque on your teeth, there'd be plaque in your brain?

Yeah. There are lesions inside the brain that are considered the hallmark or the signature of Alzheimer's diseases. For a really, really long time, scientists, everybody thought that Alzheimer's was a disease of old age. And that's because the symptoms become evident when people are in their 70s, but.

Now people are getting them in their 50s. The plaque buildup.

That's right. So Alzheimer's disease starts with negative changes in the brain decades prior to anyone forgetting kids or forgetting names. That happens in midlife. And the very first signs that we can detect using brain scans are these plaques, these lesions that you can see building up inside your brain. And there's a very clear difference in the timeline for people in Western diet who developed the plaques earlier than people who follow healthier diets.

Wow.

So that's a big flag.

If you notice someone's brain scan is shrinking their brain, they're building some of these early stage plaques around their brain. They've got more fluid, less brain matter. Is there a way to reverse that so your brain can actually grow and expand and become healthier and reverse Alzheimer's plaque? Is that possible?

So. Well, that's the hope with the vaccinations that we're working on. So scientists have been working on developing vaccines for Alzheimer's disease for a really, really long time. The idea is that if you remove the plaques, your brain will stop deteriorating. But so far, all the clinical trials failed, which is in removing the plaques. No, they've removed the plaques, but they do not reverse dementia or cognitive impairment or the atrophy. So that's disappointing in so many ways, I can't even begin to tell you. But that's another reason why the entire scientific community is now moving towards prevention. People say we're starting too late. We should start treating this when people are younger.

Right. Not when they need it. It's like when you're.

It's preventative. You know, we want to. We want people not to get those plaques. I think that would be ideal.

So when you get. When you start to build up these plaques, what I'm hearing you say is you can remove the plaque Potentially.

Yeah.

Like you're still cannot reverse dementia or Alzheimer's. Are you able to reverse Alzheimer's in some way? Is that possible?

Depends on what you mean by reversing Alzheimer's. There's Alzheimer's disease, which is the actual pathology, the lesions and plaques and tangles and a bunch of other things. And then there's dementia, which is the clinical syndrome with the symptoms. We can reverse Alzheimer's by removing the plaques, but the problem is that the symptoms don't go away.

Really. So we're unable to reverse the symptoms of dementia currently. Is that right? No one's had dementia and then reversed it.

Not in clinical trials.

Is there a way to slow this process down so it doesn't get worse? And it's kind of like a manageable symptoms where it's like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm forgetting or I'm losing memory, but it's not worse and worse and worse every day. Have we seen that?

Yeah. So there are some medicines that we have. There are Alzheimer's drugs that slow down progression, like Donepezil or Areicept, like the most common. Well, we only have four medications approved for Alzheimer's disease.

Where is Alzheimer's the most prevalent in the world?

The United States are quite on top. And then there are other countries as well, in Europe, some places in Asia. I think industrialized countries in general experience very. Experience higher rates of dementia. And one thing that I would like to point out that is against my work so that Alzheimer's disease affects women more than men or affects more women than men, to say more correctly? Yes.

Why is that?

One thing that people don't realize is that almost 2/3 of all Alzheimer's patients are women. So for every man suffering from Alzheimer's, there are two women. And that's one of the reasons that I started looking into Alzheimer's disease, is that I have a family history of Alzheimer's disease that really affects the women in my family. So if you can't believe it, my grandmother was one of four siblings, three sisters and one brother. All three sisters developed Alzheimer's disease and died of it, whereas the brother was parent. So for me, that was terrifying for my mom as well. And I started asking questions. I was like, why does it matter? Is it just my family number one? My screw.

Is it a gene that your parents have that then you're gonna have no matter what? Because I think that's a fear for a lot of people. Like, my grandfather had it, my dad's gonna, you know.

Yes. For a really long time, most people understood Alzheimer's disease as some kind of inevitable consequence of aging or bad genes in your DNA. But we now understand that no more than 2% of all Alzheimer's cases are genetically inherited. 2% at most have.

So you could have five people in your family have it, and you still have a 2% chance of getting it from them, the gene. Is that right?

Well, this is in the whole population. I think if five people in your family have Alzheimer's disease, you want to get tested for genetic patients.

Is it because of the diets they've been eating, it's the reason why they're getting it, or is it because they're going to get it no matter What?

So for 2% of the population is genetic, is genetically determined for 98% of the population is multifactorial. So there are a number of factors that really matter, including your genetic background, not in a causative way, but more. There are genes that give you blue eyes and genes that give you brown eyes, and there are some genes that negatively impact brain health and genes that are protective. So it's a combination of things. But then medical history is supremely important. Lifestyle is huge and the environment, they really all matter. And what we have found is that hormonal aging, your hormones are also incredibly important, especially for women. So it's what I was telling you. So for a really long time, people would say to me, women live longer than men, and Alzheimer's disease is a disease of old age. Obviously, more women than men have Alzheimer's disease. But what we have shown is that, yes, women live a little bit longer than men. Four and a half years on average.

Four and a half years.

But we tend to develop Alzheimer's disease at a younger age. The men.

And this is why is that is you think that's more.

It's menopause? Well, one of the reasons, at least the reasons that we are looking into much all the time at this point is menopause. And it's literally that during menopause, we lose the superpowers of estrogen and the brain goes through quite a transition. You can see how brain energy levels literally change in women's brains. Connectivity changes, the white matter volume changes, blood flow changes, everything kind of changes. And for some women, it's just a phase. It's just a transition. The brain adjusts. There's a new baseline, there's a new normal. We move on.

It's a what a.

Some women, we don't.

How long does that transition take? Is it months? Is it years?

Yeah. No, it's years. It's years.

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Yes, for some. For some women, however, the symptoms of menopause don't go away. It may turn into something more serious, including a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease. So basically, we start developing these Alzheimer's plaques. Not all women, this is not universal. But some women with a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease start developing these red flags for Alzheimer's disease in their 40s and 50s, so much earlier than we have thought before. And then, of course, think about it. So you're going through menopause and your brain is changing and it really needs to be support. And you're eating poorly, you're not exercising, you're not sleeping, you have a ton of stress. Those factors all really work together against you in a way. So I think it's really important for men and for women, I would say women really need to start thinking about that in midlife, that our brain is like a muscle. There are things that we can do to make it stronger and more resilient. We can exercise it properly, we can feed it properly, We. We can take care of it properly. And your brain will perform so much better for you at any age. And men and women need to do slightly different things. What are the not so slightly so, for example, for some women, we have a lot of patients who come to us, they learn so much more about their brains and the risk factors. And then some women will start taking hormones, hormonal replacement therapy. It's really case by case. Some women swear by it, some women swear at it. They really hate it. It does not work. It helps. Doesn't help at all for some women is a godsend. And I think it's really important to have a conversation with a doctor, not just your menopause specialist, but I think also brain doctor. And we're not there yet. We're not there yet. I now work at the intersection between neurology, neuroscience and women's health, which is a very unusual space, very interesting space, but it's also a very challenging space. And I think my hope for the future is that we'll start looking at women as organisms, as a person, right? Not like you go to the endocrinologist to look at your thyroid. You know, you go to the OBGYN to look at your ovaries, then you have to go to a brain person to look at your brain. I believe in integrative medicine. I think that we're more moving in that direction.

It's all connected. It might be a problem here, but it's affecting something else. It's all connected.

Yes, I think that is really, really important. But however, hormonal replacement therapy really doesn't work for all women. And there is no recommendation to use it for Alzheimer's prevention yet. We're working on it. We're hoping that we'll find a good way to help integrate these therapies into, in a safe way. But I would say that, you know, the point of hormone replacement therapy is that you want to get women the estrogens that the body is no longer making. But where are these estrogens coming from? Because plants make estrogens. So estrogen is the most ancient of hormones and that means that it can go across species. So plants make estrogens, animals make estrogens, women make estrogens. And estrogens from a plant phytoestrogens enter a woman's body. And if you consume these plant based foods often enough, that's effectively a very gentle hormonal replacement therapy over time. Which is one of the reasons that people think that a Mediterranean style diet that is more plant centered is beneficial for women's health. Because women on this kind of diet have a much lower risk of a number of things from cardiovascular disease and stroke to depression to Alzheimer's disease, dementia. And also they have fewer hot flashes that they don't suffer from menopause the way that so many American women do.

Now, I've heard from different scientists and nutritionists about meat being a complete protein protein and having like these nutrient dense within the meat. But I'm hearing you say that plant based has just as many nutrients and proteins and antioxidants and all these other things. What are the benefits or the, or the cons against eating quality meat, let's say for brain function and brain health? Are there things we should look out for if we do have a lot of meat or some meat in our diet?

It's a, it's a really interesting point. I think so many people right now are eating a lot of meat. There are a lot of diets out there that really support and encourage eating good quality meat, but quite a lot of meat. The research points to plant based diets as being healthier overall and more protective.

For the brain.

I would say yes for the brain, but I think also in general there aren't that many dietary recommendations that include a lot of meat. I think every person is, is Different. But to your point, there's no need to eat meat to obtain complete protein. It's an easy way. It's definitely convenient for you if you're not an animal. It's a, it's a good way to obtain complete protein just in one small amount in a small portion of food. To obtain the same amount of protein from plant based foods, you need to eat more of those. But there are some plant based foods that are actually quite rich in protein which are interesting, like hemp seeds, complete protein, tempeh, complete protein, nutritional yeast, complete protein and also a good source of vitamin B12. So I think it's A fish is a good source of complete protein that's actually been linked time and time again with a lower risk of dementia by almost 70%.

If you could only eat five foods every single day for the rest of your life.

Oh my gosh.

To optimize brain health, brain functionality, longevity support, memory, all those things.

Yes.

What would those five foods be on a daily basis?

I would say, well, you don't like berries, but I would definitely go for berries because they're rich in fiber, they're low in sugars, and they provide really an enormous amount of antioxidants for the small serving size. And just evidence that consuming two to three servings of berries per week really slows down cognitive decline in both men and women, and especially in women. So you might want to try something, man.

I got to start. Which berries?

Blackberries actually have more antioxidants than even blueberries. So that's an interesting type of berry. They're not as easy to find as blueberries, but you can get them frozen and they're still quite intense.

If it's a modified BlackBerry, where it's frozen, it's put in a smoothie and blended, it's in liquid form. Does that all still matter or do you need it?

No cooking. So cooking destroys vitamin C? Vitamin C, all the antioxidants. It really is a damaged by heat. So freezing shouldn't reduce the entire oxidant capacity by too much. Obviously you don't want them to be frozen for 10 years.

I mean, so we got blackberries, blueberries.

Blackberries are great. Goji berries are one of the most concentrated sources of vitamin C. There's a kind of plum that I haven't been able to find. It's called kakadu plum, which seems to be the most powerful concentrated source of vitamin C on the planet. I know they have been in Australia and Pacific islands. I've never seen it here, but I Would like to try it.

Okay, so we got berries number one. What would be the second?

Mulberries are really good mulberries. Berries. Sorry, I'm still.

I actually had mulberry tree in my backyard in Ohio growing up, and I would eat some mulberries every now and then. So maybe I'll get back into mulberries. Dried mulberries work too.

Yeah, they're very good. They're very tasty.

You still have the nutrients when they're dried?

Yes, a little bit less than the fresh ones, but they're sweeter, they're dry.

Those are high in antioxidants.

Yeah, they're high in antioxidants.

Okay, great. Awesome. Okay, so we got berries is what you do.

Get the berries. Then I would go for dark leafy greens because they're really important. They contain a ton of phytonutrients, which are really good. You know, they have antioxidant, anti inflammatory properties and a lot of fiber. And fiber is really important for a number of reasons. The most obvious being that it supports gut health, obviously. And 70% of the immune system is in the gut. So eating fiber also supports immunity, which especially now, is a huge concern for everyone. But also fiber has a really important modulatory function on sex. Hormone binding globulin, which is what regulates flow of hormones inside the body. And so it really helps support hormonal health as well. So I would say two reasons to eat fiber and go for your leafy greens. And there's a ton of greens. And we don't have to eat kale all the time. There is so many other varieties that.

Are just spinach and arugula.

All those, all the lettuces, all the different microgreens. There are colored greens if you like them, but also cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower. Now is the season. So cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, romanesco. They're yummy. I'm sure. You eat veggies?

I eat those. I eat a lot of veggies.

Yeah, there you go.

Okay, so we got.

Those are the first two. Well, I would throw some polyunsaturated fatty acids there that the omega 3s, whether from fish. Do you eat fish?

Yeah.

Right. So in that case, for those who do eat fish, then this mashed fish. So salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, herring. Smash.

Smash. Fish.

Yeah.

All right.

So these are really good sources, very concentrated sources of dha.

And if you didn't get that from fish, what would Be the substitute you would do plant based.

Well, for me, plant based. So Omega 3 is from hemp seeds for sure. Flax seeds and flax oil, walnuts, almonds, chia seeds and also seaweed. I don't know if you like seaweed.

I actually love seaweed. I eat those little.

I know, so good. Yeah, that's good for you then, huh? Yes.

And in this final section, founder of the True North Health center, which specializes in medically supervised water only fasting, Dr. Alan Goldhammer breaks down the different benefits of water fasting and the routines you should follow when fasting. The pattern you use on a monthly basis. You do 16 hour water only. But then are you doing one day a month, one day a week, or for 24 hours?

16 hours every day and 8 hours of feeding. And then once a year we'll fast a week or two depending on the individual and how they're doing. What will you do a week, a year? Assuming at a week that there's no symptoms that show up from fasting, then that's the end of it. And I hate fasting. You cannot play basketball. You have to do anything. It's us. So it's not something that we would want to wish on somebody excessively. On the other hand, it can be a very effective way of in both helping sick people recover, but also I believe in helping healthy people stay that way. Really, I think that the people that may get ultimately the most benefit from fasting are healthy people that use it preventatively, that want to stay healthy. The difference is that in a person that lives a healthy lifestyle, fasting, fasting is much less entertaining, it's a much less dynamic process. People don't have a lot of the symptoms that people that are sick getting well have.

Because what I've heard you say before is that you can't really work out while you're doing a water fast. Even if it's a 24 hour fast. Is it okay to move some or do you really need the benefits of rest while you're drinking water?

Well, we recommend that people limit their routine fasting to 16 hours because the problem is you get people beyond 16 hours and you start depleting glycogen stores now you're going to force more gluconeogenesis. So I think the goal is in non supplemented fasting to fast within those reserves, maximize fat loss and rest recovery and minimize gluconeogenesis. Now some people do modified fasting where they can be more active because they're getting 600 calories or 700 calories. And so they have a little bit more flexibility in terms of the amount of activity they might undergo. That's not the approach that we're taking. So in our clinic, these patients are average two to three weeks, as much as 40 days. And usually there's a reason. They're either a healthy person trying to stay healthy, but more likely they have high blood pressure, they have diabetes, they have autoimmune disease, they have lymphoma, they want to get well, they're willing to do anything, even eat well and exercise and put a bed on time.

Really radical, because it's been years or decades of suffering, probably, or pain or some type of stress.

What I believe are highly motivated people. And the best motivation in my experience is pain, debility and fear of death.

That's it.

That's who's willing to do these. You know, they say it's really radical because radical does mean radicus or root or cause. And we're actually trying to get to the reason why people are getting sick. So we're not talking about the leading causes of death, we're talking about the actual causes of death. The reason people get the heart disease, cancer, the stroke, not treating it after they've developed it, thinking that somehow that's going to be the whole answer, but actually trying to understand why is it this problem has arisen and what can they do to undo the consequences of their dietary excess.

When you see people do a two to four week fast, do you physically see transformation from eczema to no eczema or the minimal eczema afterwards? Words or autoimmune disease? Do you see it drastically changing? Is it small changes that it's going to take multiple times over a year or years? What do you typically see when you see someone coming?

It varies, you know, from patient. Patient. For example, we recently published a paper in the British Medical Journal of a case of a young woman who came in with follicular lymphoma, stage three, which is a type of lymph cancer, had large palpable tumors involving her upper and lower, internally, external. You could even feel them externally or large enough. Those are in the lymph gland. So when they're very large, you can feel them. You can also see them on CAT scan. She had excisional biopsy. It was well documented.

Wow.

So we ended up fasting her for 21 days and by three weeks of fasting, you couldn't feel the tumor.

Wait, come on.

10 days recovery, back to her oncologist for CT scans, make a Long story short, this woman was able to completely resolve her stage three follicular lymphoma at a year. We had a whole body ct, we were able to show that she's completely free of cancer. We have a three year follow up and the case report and the follow up are published in the British Medical Journal Case Reports. You can go onto our website and take a look there. It's exquisitely carefully detailed since then, including at our clinic right now. We have other patients with follicular lymphoma, including one gentleman right now is stage four follicular lymphoma who's had preliminarily good results. He's on his second fast now. We did a previous fast last year. We've gotten significant improvement. We're now doing another fast, only this fast is going to be 40 days. And we're hoping that we can get the same kind of clearing, resolution and long term stability. Once we've published enough case reports in the form of cohort, we'll be able to then hopefully justify a clinical trial. We believe we're going to do real well with this particular type of cancer because our clinical observation is that it consistently is responding. Now, it may not be the same thing when you talk about a solid organ tumor, a lung cancer, different type of cancer may respond completely different.

Brain cancer, things like that.

Yeah, especially brain cancer. That's hard, huh? Well, brain masses are not as responsive, possibly because of the way the body mobilizes things in fasting and the blood brain barrier and some of the limitations to be able to get access to it. So you can't just say cancer is cancer, it's not all the same. And you can't say the same person with the same condition is going to respond the same. In answer to your question, some people like her, it's really dramatic where one fast, big change. But I've also had people where it's the third fast before we see those big clinically significant. And I also have people that do everything right and we're still suffering and not responding. And we can't always predict who's going to respond, who's not going to respond. That's part of the research that we're doing is trying to figure out how do you predict who's going to respond the most, how long are they going to need to fast, when are they done fasting? Even non invasive biological markers are not readily available because nobody up till now has been doing much research with long term water fasting.

How much does the belief in your mindset that this fast will heal or help prevent or help, you know, create more healing? For me, how much is the mindset, the thought process on a daily basis that I'm healing, healing myself, this water is cleansing my body, whatever the mind is telling versus I don't know if this is going to work and what am I doing this for? How much do you believe the mind manipulates the healing process?

So I think that attitude is very important because it determines action, but it's the action you take that determines the outcome. So just having good thoughts, I don't think is enough to get the job done. But if having good thoughts and having a good attitude allows you to be motivated to do what it takes to get well, it's critical. We typically only work with people that have a good attitude because they wouldn't come to us otherwise. We have highly motivated, self selected patients that are willing to do really radical things like eat well, exercise, sleep, and fast. You know, the fact is, most people think if they get on a plane in New York and they go all the way to California, they will die from starvation over Colorado. They think those pretzels saved their lives. They don't know. So we know differently. We know that the fact is the body is really good at adapting to the fasting state, particularly appropriate people in a resting state, and they can do it safely. We've done it over 20,000 times in patients. Many of them are elderly and ill and. And yet of the 20,000 people that have walked in, 20,000 people have walked out. And you know, we're really trying to maintain those safety records. So we try really hard only to work with people that we expect to have an acceptable outcome.

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Yes.

What would you say is a good window of time to try on your own at home? Without medical safety? I guess, or someone watching over you? What is it? Is it 24 hours? Is it three days.

So I really believe that everybody should try to do this on their own for up to 16 hours every day, but consistently do it day after day after day. And I think that cumulatively you can safely and effectively get the accumulation from intermittent fasting without putting yourself in a situation where you have to go in, have a medical evaluation, get a doctor that will be able to establish baseline data and then monitor you through the process. And I think what happens, particularly for people that are on medications, you can really muck yourself up. For example, let's say you're on steroid medications or you're on anticoagulant medications, or you're on dysrhythmia medications. Even a 48 hour period of fasting can be a really complicating factor because you don't fast on medications, you don't want to arbitrarily discontinue medications. It really is unfortunately a process that's best done with the right people in a.

So if you're on Medicaid, you don't want to stop your medication to fast for two days, right?

And you don't want to fast on medications for two days.

You don't want to keep taking medicine.

And not food because the medications that may be okay, okay, in a feeding state may be very much more of a problem after you get into the fasting. So our recommendation is fast every day for 16 hours, eat clean in those eight hours, and then if it's appropriate, you know, longer term fasting can be considered. If people would like to know whether long term fasting is useful, there's a really simple thing, it doesn't cost them anything. Then go onto our website, complete registration forms and give me a call, I'll talk to them. It doesn't cost them anything. And if they're, we're on depending, depending where they live, we can send them to doctors that are trained in fasting supervision near them that can help them go through the process safely and effectively. And if they're not a good candidate, we can let them know that maybe there's alternatives to water only fasting for.

Those that are healthy, not on medication, you know, younger, just trying to optimize their life and test things. What do you say, 48 hours, three days, five days, what's like, okay, you can be fine for three days doing it.

So that would depend on whether they can rest during the process. If they're going to be really active, they really would be better off limiting their fasting to 16 hours and then go through feeding now what Valter Longo and others do is they have recommendations of calorie limited modified fasting where they give people 750 calories for five days. And that seems to be able to be done safely. It doesn't require the same degree of modification of medication. Medications and other things. So I would say look at Valter Longo's book and look at his approach to modified regime. I wouldn't recommend our more radical approach. Our approach is really better done for people that are when we're doing long term fasting, done in a controlled setting.

Got it. Okay. But if I wanted to try it on my own, you think two days is fine?

I think that you should do 16 hours every day.

I'm doing that already.

Eat a whole plant food, SOS3 diet and the other 8 hours I need to do that. And then at some point you should come in, take a week off, do a fast at TrueNorth and let's do a show from you fasting. Let's show people what they actually experience in a hopefully healthy individual. Seven days, whatever seems to be appropriate for you. We have to figure it.

I can't work out.

That is the biggest challenge. You'd have to limit yourself to stretching, yoga, mild activity. During your fast, do you work still.

Or are you just like. I'm just relaxing, watching tv. TV all day, drinking water.

Well, actually we have a pretty active educational program. We have people go through three classes a day. We have videos.

So it's like I'm in a dorm, I'm in a hotel and I'm in a process.

You have a private room, but there's a community in the controlled setting where you have to get what I call brainwashing, what everybody else calls education. And the idea really help fine tune people's attitudes towards diet, sleep, exercise and the things that you need to keep, keep doing after you leave so that you can sustain the long term results and make us look good.

Where is this based?

We're in Santa Rosa, California. It's about an hour north of San Francisco.

Okay. So people come into this clinic and then they stay for a week to.

Weeks, Anywhere from a week to some cases as long as a year.

And they're getting educated every day. You just say, here's your food for the day. Like how many glasses do I get? Is there like a dessert? Water?

We go through at least 40 ounces of water a day.

40 ounces of water?

Yeah. Minimum.

What is that?

40 ounces is about? Well, it depends on the size of your glass, but rage tall glasses, that's 12. So it's going to at least get four. At least four of those. Enough so that you can maintain.

Wait a minute, so only four glasses of water minimum.

Four could be as much water as your thirst indicates.

Really.

So the idea is we don't want to make you a. You're not a loaded. The problem is if you drink excessively, you can flush your electrolytes. So there is water intoxication that occurs if you just drink obsessively. So we want enough water to maintain normal specific gravity. So we're monitoring your blood and your urine and make sure you're in target. If you get a little dehydrated, we might say, well, let's get an extra glass of water. If you're drinking too much water where electrolytes get a little low, we might say let's keep from getting too carried away.

So what happens every day? I'm getting tested with urine and blood sample or what?

So our doctors examine patients at least twice a day.

Day.

So we're taking vitals and evaluating how they're doing. We're monitoring blood and urine.

Stool also, I guess there's no stool after.

Well, you're not going to be passing stool once you stop eating. Two days, I guess once you empty the bowels. Because you're not putting. Because when think about what is stool. It's undigested fiber circle Inogen, some stuff from the liver, mostly bacteria. So there's going to be a massive change in bacteria during fasting. In fact, that's one of the big benefits of fasting is you know, you have five pounds of bacteria in your gut right now.

Five pounds of waste.

A trillion creatures. No, I'm talking about bacteria, not just waste. You have a trillion creatures eating, drinking and defecating inside you. Right now they're pooing inside you and what they poo in you depends on what you're feeding.

Is it a healthy bacteria or unhealthy?

Well, if you're feeding them a lot of animal products, you're going to have much higher TMA than people that eat a lot of plant based trimethylamine. Well, it becomes tmao, which is trimethylamine oxidase, which irritates animal lining of your vessels. And maybe one of the reasons people get more colon cancer and heart disease when they're on high animal product diets than plant eaters that tend to have less. If you feed your bacteria soluble fiber like sweet potatoes, you're going to get vitamin K and fertilizer. So if you want more fertilizer and less toxic waste, you want to minimize the highly processed foods and animal foods, maximize the whole natural plant foods, you get a different flora and that's thought to be protective of your immune system. Reduce your risk for colon cancer, help you resist viral infections, maintain better weight. There's a lot of stuff that's just coming out now about the changes in the microbiome as a consequence of diet and also fasting. We've actually done a study where we looked at stool samples before fasting, early fasting, and then after recovery, looking at the changes in microbiome that occur in fasting. So, you know, there's a lot of interest in what exactly the body does not to only the thousand different strains of bacteria, but what they're giving off.

Right.

And so lots to learn. A lot of the stuff that we're doing now, really virgin data, because not very many people have had a chance to look at people with long term water fasting. And what happens physiologically?

What's the minimum? I could go to your facility.

There really is no minimum because some people will fast, even just a few days. That means be all that's necessary. So you never know exactly what's ideal until you see how the person responds. And some people really aren't good candidates for fasting. So they might come to true north, but they wouldn't be water fasting. We might do a modified feeding regime or just healthy eating, exercise, appropriate supportive care. We also have doctors of chiropractic, osteopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture. There's a lot of people have problems that aren't all nutrition based. Sometimes they have more mechanical problems. So we would approach it from a similar philosophy, but not necessarily only fasting.

Right. I've heard from Dr. Jason Fung that he says fasting has been shown to, I don't know if it's reverse or eliminate or really support type 2 diabetes. I don't know. Is there a lot more research on this or is this accurate about what you've seen in your studies?

Yeah, well, we treat. There's two types of diabetes. The type 1 diabetics that don't make insulin is one type. Those people would not be good candidates for fasting because insulin is a part of the adaptive process of fasting. So a type 1 diabetic or a type 1 and a half diabetic, but they're not producing enough insulin, can become ketoacidotic, get into dehydration. It can be really complicated. They've Got to eat mess. So they have to maintain tighter insulin and glucose controls than sometimes would be inherent with with water only fasting. If they don't make insulin. Type 2 diabetics, which is what most diabetics are, make enough insulin, in fact, they make more insulin. It's not working.

And what's the cause of type 2 diabetes?

Insulin resistance. And insulin resistance is caused by the diet that makes you fat. It's not even just the fat, obesity is associated with it, but it's the diet that makes you fat that causes insulin resistance. Which is why our type 2 diabetics look long before they've lost all their fat, begin normalizing their blood sugar levels. They may still be overweight, but their blood sugar levels come barreling down because they stop the diet that's making them fat. In fact, some of our patients just in preparing for fasting, we have to be really careful with their medication regulation because they start normalizing even before we get started with the fasting, just by making the dietary changes. And then once we start fasting, blood sugar levels come down. Insulin levels are normalized after fasting. Assuming we adopt a whole plant food, SOS free diet, get involved in SOS free Salt, oil and sugar. SOS is the international symbol of danger and it stands for salt, oil and sugar, the chemicals added to food that make people fat, sick and miserable. It's salt, oil and sugar additions to the food. That is why people are being fooled, fooling their society, mechanisms getting in the pleasure trap and developing obesity and type.

2D diabetes, also known as the SAD diet, the standard American diet. Right?

Yeah.

If we use fasting to normalize insulin function, normalize blood sugar levels, and then adopt a health promoting diet and exercise program, we can sustain that. And about 80% of our type 2 diabetics will achieve normal sugar levels without medications after a single fast. Some of those that have more resistance may need to do additional fasting. Or if you can't get them down to optimum weight within the context of initial fast, you may take a little longer.

For those that are coming in who are on medications, what are the average, would you say medications that people are taking? Who are taking medications? And then within three to six months after fasting, what is the average that they're taking afterwards?

Medications. So let's talk about high blood pressure first. You know, people may be on a simple diuretic like hydrochlorothiazide, or they may be on as many as five medications. Some of our, our patients come in capped out on medications 220 over 120. Wait, some of them, no. 5 medications capped out with the systolic blood pressure is as much as 220 and diastolics as much as 120. So we see some very severe hypertensive patients. But in the study we did of 174 patients, 174 patients had pressure low enough to eliminate the need for all medication. Really the average effect of stage three hypertension. So people who started 180 or higher on systolic blood pressure, their average drop will be 60 points. It's 60 points plus the fact that they're often baselined on meds. None of them are on medications. If they fasted, by definition, we've eliminated all medications and they don't need to go back on medications if they're willing to do the diet and lifestyle. Now obviously, if they go back to the salty, fatty processed food, they can eventually develop a weight obesity. Interesting.

So high blood pressure is 100% related to food.

Essential hypertension is not 100% related to food, but it's 100% manageable with diet and lifestyle, sleep, stressed and overwhelmed exercise. Stress management also can be an important role for many people.

But most people believe that you can't reverse high blood pressure. You just have to be on medication forever, isn't that right?

People can't reverse hypertension unless they're willing to do diet, sleep, exercise and lifestyle model.

Then you can reverse it?

Yes, you can reverse it. In fact, you can almost always reverse it. We don't see people with essential hypertension that don't normalize their pressure if they're willing to do these types of interventions. Now if they don't come down, usually it's because something's been missed and they actually have secondary hypertension. There's nephrosclerosis, there's some kind of other pathology. And so we have to do more detailed imaging to find out what is it that was, you know, been overlooked. I would say that at any one time we have an average of about 70 patients undergoing care at the center. We have at least 20 hypertensive patients. And in any given year we might not have any of those typical patients who won't be able to lower their pressure enough to sustain it without medication.

So of these, this test you did of, I think you said 170.

Is that what you said?

174 patients, they all had medication coming in, is that right?

Not all of them were medicated. Most all of them had sustained pressures of 140 or 90 or higher. And all of the ones that were medicated were unmedicated by the time they stopped. Afterwards, all of our patients stopped because they can't fast if we don't get them off the meds. Now, sometimes we may have to feed them for a week to be able to wean their meds down because we don't like starting fasting. If the person's at 220, we're not going to initially start. We're going to feed them, wean them, wind them, and then once we get below 160, we can start, start fasting.

And then how many weeks of water fasting is that? Typically until they're completely off the mat.

So it ranges from five to 40 days. But the typical hypertensive patient is going to fast somewhere between two and three weeks. Now, during that time, they're going to lose £25. They're going to.

They're going to look 10 years younger. They're going to feel better. Yeah. You know, have energy, focus, they better.

Because otherwise, you know, they're going to get really mad at us because fasting is not a lot of fun. You have to take time off work, you have to rest. Although it's getting a little bit better. You know, one big thing that's happened recently is this idea that it's okay for people to, you know, like, work from home. Because what's happened is a lot of times people could take a couple weeks off to come in and fast, but they couldn't stay long enough to properly recover. So we couldn't fast them because we need about half the length of fast recovery. Well, now what happens? They come in and fast, but while they're recovering, they can work. They can work because we've got like a really robust WI fi system. That's great. And they can work, work. In fact, I have one guy, he only works fast. He comes in once a year. He fasts. He's a writer. He writes better when he's fasting. And the rest of the rest. I don't think he does much of anything.

You can get in the zone so much better. I've seen you can stay there longer because you're not thinking about. I need to go eat. I'm going to snack on something. I'm tired now from eating. My digestive system is using all the energy. The energy is focused on creation. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links and also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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