69. Why Your Relationships Matter More Than Supplements with Shawn Stevenson

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Welcome to Rooted in Wellness with me, wellness advocate and holistic nutritionist, Mona Sharma. Together, we will take a journey to discover natural healing practices, from imbalance to balance, guided by ancient wisdom and modern scientific insights. I was raised living summers on an ashram, so I learned early on that food is medicine and and your kitchen is your greatest source of healthcare and prevention. After facing two heart surgeries, anxiety and weight challenges, I discovered that just because your symptoms are common, doesn't mean that they are normal. Together with some incredible guests, we will explore the power of our mind, body and soul connection, returning to our roots to rediscover our greatest wellbeing. What if the most powerful healing tool isn't something that you can buy, but something you've had all along? In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend Shawn Stevenson, bestselling author and host of the Model Health show, to explore how our relationships shape everything from our stress levels to our digestion, hormones, metabolism and even gene expression. We talk about the deep science behind connection and how eating together lowers cortisol, how oxytocin supports the gut, and why loneliness might be the biggest health threat of our time. But we also go deeper into culture, rituals, family meals, and the healing power of feeling seen, valued and loved. He reminds us that healing isn't always about doing more. It's about reconnecting with what truly nourishes us, presence, purpose, and the people that we love. Shawn Stevenson is the author of Eat Smarter and Sleep Smarter. He's also a leading voice in evidence based integrative health. Through his books, his podcasts, his teachings, he empowers people to come back to their bodies, build supportive environments and live in alignment with their values. Let's dive in. Shawn Stevenson, welcome to the Rooted in Wellness podcast.

So good to be here.

Before we dive in. This podcast is all about ancient wisdom in our modern world and really how we can help our listeners become more rooted but rooted in the sense of who they are, but also their health, their happiness, and maybe even the inner wisdom that everyone has that they can heal. So to start off, what are three things that help you feel rooted in your health and who you are? Your happiness.

Number one, family. You know, just being around my tribe and you know, you know what it's like when you make people, you know, to be a part of your tribe as well and just being able to glean insights and energy from both sides, you know, of the generations, you know, my mom, my mother in law and my kids. So that's number one. And we'll Talk a lot about that today.

Family's a big part of who you are and what you share. So I love that you said that first.

Yeah, it's a big leverage. You know, it's an epigenetic influence. And again, we'll talk more about that. But that's. That's number one. Number two is a lot to movement. You know, it's something that our genes expect from us, is to move. And there's still cultures today that. It is a unwritten mandate within the kind of code of the culture. If you don't move, you die. You know, we required movement in order for us to survive. And now the game has changed a lot. You know, there's. Everything is basically accessible with your phone. We could sit here right now and have this interview and have DoorDash deliver right to us.

We don't have to.

Right. We got all the entertainment we could ever imagine. You know, people can even find a mate without going somewhere today, you know, which is. It's. It's interesting. It's interesting. So that would be number two, lots and lots of movement. And number three, play. You know, play can be kind of incorporated with the movement. You know, it's. It could be parallel to that or even perpendicular, but play. You know, I love that sentiment that we don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing. Sorry about that. I'm usually very great at quotes, but I got so excited to say it, and then I thought, this is what my chain of thought was. There's a Jeremy Renner movie, which he went through a little tragic accident, Big tragic accident. But he's the star of this movie. And these old friends are playing this continuous game of tag. Right. And so they started as childhood.

Yes.

Yeah.

They meet up as adults. Right. And it's a massive game. Yeah, that's a good movie.

And I love that quote already. But then it was, like, kind of the hallmark of that movie. And so my brain went into that for that tunnel, for whatever reason, but I was able to grab it out.

That's a good one. So I own in on those questions because I think that, you know, I have such incredible speakers and guests and experts sitting in that chair. And I think that when people look to us as practitioners in wellness, they think that healing's complicated, that the things that matter most to us are going to come with a lengthy checklist. And I would say, nine times out of 10, everyone that sits there, it's something that's free. It's something that's free. And it's something that comes to their heart. So thank you for owning in on that. The other part of that too is I also don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the people that you and I meet with, they ended up hitting rock bottom through some sort of a health diagnosis. You are not, you are unique to this story, but you're not unique to this story. Right, so you were diagnosed with degeneration of your spine, right, in your 20s?

20. At 20, yeah.

At 20. So. So you've been on this healing journey. And I'm curious, do you notice when you drift, like when you go back to old ways that used to be part of you, and what are the things that cause you to feel uprooted when that happens?

That's such a great question. You know, this, even this, this conversation itself, the umbrella that kind of covers all of this, is about culture. And to define culture, you know, really quickly, it's the attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors shared by a group of people and, and then pass from one generation to the next. And so the culture that I've intentionally created makes it really easy to not fall back into these old habits and ways of being that led to the conditions that I was in. Now, of course this is not perfect, but I think it can manifest its head in different ways. And that's what's so interesting. So at 20, I was diagnosed with this so called incurable condition. And even for this to show up on the MRI where my L4, L5 S1 disc were just like showing a black on the MRI because they were so degenerated. I was a child, 20 years old. That took years of really devolution and degeneration of my spine for it to show up like that and for me to have these very noticeable symptoms. But prior to that, When I was 15, I was at track practice. And at the time I just had all these incredible aspirations and opportunities to play football at the next level, run track. I ran a 4, 5, 40 already as a kid. And at track practice, I was coming off the curve into the straightaway, doing a 200 meter time trial and my hip broke. Right? And it's just like, how on earth would that happen to a child? There was no fall, nothing like that. But my bone density was so brittle and, and it just led to a string of additional injuries that kept me off the football field, off the track. And ultimately I get that diagnosis. Now here's the, the rub at the time, and I've been really trying to champion this message because this is very like pertinent right now. At the time I was eating, and this is no exaggeration, and I'm going to back this up with, with some science. I was eating about 90% ultra processed foods. Okay. And right now, and this was just published in jama, the Journal of the American Medical association, just a couple of years ago, they looked at ultra processed food consumption by U.S. children from 1999 to 2018. So it's about 20 years. In 1999, the average U.S. child was eating 62, about 62% ultra processed foods already. All right. By 2018, that number reached almost 70%. It's like 68% of the average child died in the United States. As you know, there are kids at both ends of the spectrum as well. So that's the mean, that's the average. I was definitely on the other end of the eating mostly predominantly ultra processed foods. And so an average day of eating, you know, going to. I was in the desec program, desegregation program, getting bused from the city to the, quote, good schools. And so I wouldn't, I wouldn't eat breakfast at home. You know, I was leaving the house at like 5:30 in the morning and taking an hour bus ride. When I get to school, I get free lunch. I mean, free breakfast and free lunch. And so I'd get, you know, some donuts or, you know, little single serving, little bowls of cereal and some juice and, you know, so I was starting my day with ultra processed foods.

Yeah.

And only ultra processed foods for lunch. And I just shared this with my son the other day. I get a personal pizza and a pretzel with cheese.

I remember those.

And so I dipped the pizza into the cheese and that was my lunch. And then, you know, we get something out the vending machine before football practice and then after school, long bus ride home. And it was ultra Processed Foods nine times out of 10 at the house, you know, and I was making my body out of some of the worst possible things. And that was the disconnection because people don't realize this. And you know, when I graduated from high school, I wanted to go to. And this was just aspirational because I didn't know anybody who went to college. Like, I was the first person in my family to go to college, let alone graduate. But I wanted to do a pre med program. And so I went to this university and in my biology class, which I hated, I, I detested science. So why on earth would I want to go to a pre med program?

Yeah.

With aspirations of becoming a doctor. And it was because of the way that I was taught. It was so disconnected from me as a human in the real world because I didn't realize as we were learning about the cell. When we're looking and studying the cell membrane, we're looking at the meals that we've eaten. When we're looking at the nucleus of the cell, it's the nutrients that person has eaten. You know, we can go on and on. The mitochondria is made from your menu. And so all these cell parts we're studying in this kind of abstract way, we're looking at food, if we're talking about it in the real world. And so I was making my cells out of just garbage, right? Newly invented fake foods, fake ingredients. And so my body was falling apart. And we could talk about some of the things I did to change that, of course. But I went from being radically unhealthy to being one of the healthiest people on the planet, you know, and just having this incredible transformation was inspiring to people around me. That really was the birthing of my career. And so I put all my chips into that healthy environment creation and it just went kind of along stepwise. And again, being able to make people and, you know, and to. And to attract other people who complement that lifestyle, it makes it a lot easier. But like I said, it can manifest in different ways because of the things we carry from that, you know. And so I carried a lot of dysfunction from the environment that I come from, a lot of violence in my environment, outside my home, inside my home, and having that show up and dysfunctional things. Maybe I'm challenging myself too much, for example, and not really honoring my body and resting enough. Right. So I went through a phase of that and just like, you know, kind of teetering into dysfunction and another manifestation of an injury or a back problem or sciatic pain or whatever because of something else. Right. And so it's addressing all of these, and I'm going to say this, all of these gifts that I was presenting with, they. They looked like challenges and devastating things at the time, but they were blessings because they helped me to continue to grow and evolve and stack conditions in my favor.

You're pulling at my heart. And I hope listeners too. I want, I really want people to share their story. Because when you lose your health, nothing matters. Everything stops. And fortunately for people who are listening, who just have curiosity around health and wellness, I think these stories really matter. When it comes down to community, I think, like you, when you made the transition, who you surrounded yourself with was probably such a great contributor because you digest everything, right, including the conversations and the friendships and everything that you have. And for listeners on the table here, we've got Sean's incredible book. It's called Eat Smarter. Before the show, we're talking about, like, every doctor needs to be gifted this book. And one of the first ways that you start it that I love is we were never taught that the content of our cells would be determined by the food that we eat. There was a disconnect from understanding that our mitochondria were made from our meals, our nuclei were made from nutrients, and our membranes were made from our menu. It's like, yes, that just got me instantly because people understand this concept of food as medicine, but because we are so disconnected from where food comes from, how it's grown, what goes into it, the process, from getting it from the farm to our table, there's a big disconnect in understanding that what I eat is going to fuel the mitochondria in my body. Right. So I love that you speak to this research shows that who we eat with is just as important as what we eat. Going back to community. So when we eat in communities, you share about the concept of how it releases oxytocin, lowers our cortisol, it can improve our digestion, improve our nutrient absorption. Growing up at the ashram, we always ate in community. We always ate with people in nature. No distractions, no phones, no screens, no anything. And it doesn't surprise me that the environment that I was in there was also such a great part of my healing journey. But can you talk a little bit more about that? Let's start with that big picture. What does the science say between the connection of who we eat with and how our bodies respond to what we're eating? Based on that?

Yes, yes, yes. Obviously, just to set the tone for that, we evolved for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, eating together as community or having input and responsibility in the procurement of food, the preparation of the food and eating together and also celebration. Like this was a hallmark time of sharing tradition and also sharing history. Right. Passing down information to the next generation. And I think a great example of this is like a luau, you know, because it's like it's kind of the show, you know, for modern day people, but you're really seeing a representation of how things were across the globe. Right. And so there was obviously the procurement of the food itself, the preparation, sharing, sitting together. But there's song, there's dance, there's Exploration, there's experience and everybody's involved today. We're no longer. We're more and more devolved or are pulled away from that. And we're eating more in isolation and most of the time in front of a screen. And my question was, is this having an impact on our health? And even just as posing that question, you already know the answer, but to what degree? And so I dove into the research and it changed everything for me because my obsession was food. Because I'm a nutritionist, my obsession was food. And I built my career on that. But I found that, whoa, this, this is, this is not just more important, this is far more important. Food matters. Of course it matters. Absolutely. Exercise matters. I wrote the book on sleep wellness. You know, it was the first sleep related book to become an international bestseller about 10 years ago. Sleep Smarter. But all of those things pale in comparison to our relationships and how they impact everything else. And so I'm gonna just stack some things here and just rattle off some things. So number one, I shared in the book one of the biggest meta analyses ever conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University and North Carolina University of North Carolina. And this was 148 studies, over 300,000 study participants. And they were looking at like, what are the. And they looked at everything, diet, exercise, smoking habits, you name it. And they found that people who had strong social bonds had a 50% boost in longevity ver those who did not. Said another way, people who had strong or healthy relationships had a 50% reduction in all cause mortality.

Right.

All right, so we're talking about 50% reduction in dying prematurely from everything. More so than beating obesity, beating smoking, diet, exercise, those things matter again. But there's something about our relationships. So that's number one. Number two, conversations with Dr. Robert Waldinger, who's the director, he's the fourth director of the longest running longitudinal study for humans on longevity. Same outcome. He's at Harvard. Same outcome. As he shared with me, healthy social bonds are far and away the most impactful thing on how long we're going to live. And now to take this to the level of how does food interact with this other researchers at Harvard, Because I was looking at this intimate act of eating together and these health outcomes. And they found that when people eat together on a consistent basis, they seem to naturally consume higher amounts of essential vitamins and minerals and all these different nutrients that help to prevent chronic diseases in those family members. When they ate together less often, they were consuming more ultra processed foods and more things that were considered to be problematic for human health and thus higher rates of chronic diseases. And I was like, okay, this is getting crazy. Dive deeper. And I come across this study that was published in Pediatrics on children. All right? And they found that when kids eat with their parents and or caregivers, and I'm a big minimum effective dose person, like, what is the on ramp for everybody? They found that three meals per week was a minimum effective dose. If kids were able to do that three times a week or more, they had dramatically reduced risk of developing obesity and disordered eating. All right, let's stack it again. What about the parents? Researchers conducted a study on some tech workers at IBM, and they were looking at the impact of, quote, getting home in time for dinner, like, which was a tradition, you know, even decade, you know, a few decades back. And what they found was that if parents were able to get home in time and have dinner with their families on a regular basis, their work morale stayed high. Their job, you know, their job satisfaction, productivity, all those things stayed high. But as soon as responsibilities cut into their ability to eat with their families on a regular basis, stress skyrockets, Work morale plummets, productivity plummets, job satisfaction plummets. And to tie all this together and answer the question why? In my conversation with Dr. Waldinger at Harvard, he shared that it's because our relationships are the most powerful means of processing stress ever discovered. Like, there's nothing else remotely close. There isn't a supplement. There isn't a mental hack being with other people who you trust, who you love, and you know that they've got your back. It helps us to metabolize stress. And as you know, stress is literally killing us. Stress caveat is not all bad. We need stress. We need the stress part of life. It helps us to grow and. And to adapt. A healing. Part of the healing process is stress. But when it becomes chronic, we're not processing stress when we're just carrying all these things. And this doesn't mean you gotta vent, per se, but just being around people that you love helps your body to process stress, and it's unconscious. And so we're talking about a change in your chemistry, right? So we know that there's a shift from this sympathetic fight or flight that we're pretty much habitually in today over to that parasympathetic rest and digest. If we're tying this into the food conversation and it happens automatically, a huge increase in oxytocin when we're around people that we care about. And oxytocin is Having a moment right now. Right. It's nicknames. It's the love hormone, cuddle hormone. Now, I wouldn't say it's just specifically that there's a lot of chemistry that takes place when it comes to love. But what we do know, and I shared this in sleep smarter 10 years ago, is that oxytocin is one of the most powerful hormones in relationship to reducing the impact of cortisol in your body. Right, right. And so it just is like, it's that thing that naturally helps to buffer stress. And so as we go deeper into this conversation, we can like, unpack. Like, what are those specific things? Yes, it metabolizes stress. That's a very big idea. But how it all happens is really miraculous as well.

It's such a beautiful and simple concept again, right. Craig and I talk about this all the time. I think we've had more dinners with our kids than we ever saw our parents at dinner. Like, my dad worked at IBM funny enough.

Come on. It's not an accident. That is the synchronicity.

He made it home really late, but he was never available to just sit down with us at dinner. And what I'm thinking is like, gosh, I think for children especially, it's like, it creates a sense of safety, right? You're with the people who have your back. You know, you're protected during that time. And people. Ten years ago, I would use energy and vibration and all those words, and now it's backed by science. Right? But there's an energy when you're with the people who, you know, love you. It emanates from their body. And in Ayurveda, we talk about the concept of, like, when you eat, when you're stressed, your digestion, it shunts, it stops down completely. You cannot digest your food when you're in that state of stress. And. And like you, I don't know about you, but every single client that I've worked with this year has said that they spend more time. Meh. With the exception of one spends more time in a state of stress than not. But also not recognizing it. It's almost like it's become their blueprint. Because we live in a world that reflects that stress. It's good to be busy, good to be doing more all the time to be available. Right? Not to mention what we're watching on our screens instantly makes us feel a sense of stress and God knows, like the hormonal cascade that that's doing. But I wonder, listening to you, how many of our listeners especially have adopted to living to a higher level of stress. Like if I could step in their body, what would I feel? Right.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah, we went out of there quick.

We went out of there quick. So let's break that down and understand then what are the long term implications? People, they might be listening. Yeah, I get it. But I can't necessarily change my lifestyle right now. Or maybe they don't live with their family members or maybe they didn't even have that experience.

Yeah.

Growing up. Right. What are some of the long term implications then of this isolation?

Yeah. Oh, funny enough, this was just published about a year, year and a half ago, and this was another one of the biggest studies ever conducted on human health and longevity. And this looked at over 2 million people longitudinal, and this could be tracking them up to about, you know, 25 years plus. And what they found was that the most dangerous thing right now for human health is social isolation and loneliness. So individuals that had chronic states of loneliness over the study period had around a 15% higher incidence of death from all causes, but it was about twice as bad, around, you know, over 30%. So this is around like 34, 35% increase in all cause mortality when people were socially isolated.

Okay, wow.

We need each other. And so when you're talking about energy, this is not a joke. Like even as we're here in this room and you know, this heart math institute, for example, our bodies are emitting certain fields that we can't see with our, you know, our, I don't want to say dumb, but like we see a certain spectrum of reality. There's so much we see way less than, than what's here. Right. There's way more stuff. And so there's a tube, torus is what they call it, that extends from the human heart up to about eight feet. And so literally when you're around other people, your energies are interacting. And then if we take it to the level of the microbiome, which is having another moment right now.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of microbial file sharing that takes place, you know, when you're around other people that trains your immune. What happens when you're isolated? You just, you're, you're, it's not getting that exercise that it needs for your immune system to be function proper, functioning properly. I can go on and on in all these invisible things. We talked about the hormone change that takes place, we talked about the change in your nervous system. But what I want to make sure that I share today is something that very, that's very practical. And this is the fact that, again, as you mentioned, we're on our phones a lot. We're on our phones, we're staring at screenshots, and we're not really being seen, right? And so we can superficially look for that in likes and things like that. And, you know, and people become obsessed with doing that stuff. But this is all that's new. What we need, what our genes expect and need from us, is to feel seen and valued in the real world, right? And so giving this blessing and benefit to your children, especially today, where they don't feel seen more than ever, to sit there without your devices and to eat a meal together, it's just stacking conditions because you got to eat anyways. But it's that psychological human need of feeling like I matter. Like, somebody sees me, I'm here, I'm here, and I'm. And my voice matters. And so, you know, just. That's a little bit more practical than some of the invisible stuff. We need that. We all need that. You know, we need that for ourselves as well. And what I feel like one of the benefits that's happened with me with my. My kids, when I brought my son, My youngest son, Braden is here, is it's humanized me more, you know, because what tends to happen. And you probably had this with you with your. With your father as well. It's like. It's kind of like Superman, you know, like, nothing phases him. He's doing his dad's working, you know, and to humanize me. And he. He has so much more empathy for me, and he's, like, looking out for me and making sure that I'm good, I'm taking care of myself, and these kind of things, you know.

Wow.

And it's beautiful. It's because of these touch points and sitting around together before we eat. Nine times out of ten, we go around. We do like a gratitude practice, right? So we'll go around and share, you know, three things that we're grateful for from that day or, you know, a while back, we did, like, what's something you failed at today? And we go around and talk about these things. And me talking about failing, me talking about failing Superman here. You know, it's just, again, it really helps to create more rapport and connection with our family members. And, you know, I just want to share this because Father's Day just passed, and I like to control my schedule, as my family knows. I don't like the sporadic unless I choose it kind of thing. So they're like okay. We're gonna do this stuff, you know, Sunday. I'm like, okay, I guess. And so they took me to this really dope brunch, and it was awesome. And so we all get. We had that thing of us sitting together, we're not on our devices, and we're hanging out, we're chopping it up, we're eating good food, and we've had this tradition. And I actually want to share a couple of tips, if I can.

Please do. Yeah.

So how do we. Because this also leads into part of that question. How do we do this today when we're more fractured than we've ever been?

Yeah. Kids are exposed to so much through their screens.

Exactly, exactly. And it. It is like. It's so addictive. It's so. So savory. It's like. It's just so much. It's infinite. Right. And so we've got to first understand that we are addicted. Right. That's kind of the first step is understand that we have a problem.

Yeah.

And more often than I've had the opportunity to talk to so many different addiction specialists over the years in doing this work. And one of the most practical things is to. If you were wanting to change a habit, is to replace it with something of equal or greater value. Right. Because just going, quote, cold turkey is very difficult.

It's hard.

Right. So you got to replace, like, what's in your hand with something else. Right. And so we had to anchor in. In the society today. And I just ran into, at one of his basketball tournaments, a mother and her family sharing how this book has impacted her. The Eat Smarter Family Cookbook and changing the dynamics of how our families eat, how our family is eating together. And so what do we do? What we have done for whatever reason, and every family is going to be different is kind of like having something to look forward to in that meal. Right. So food is awesome, but you got to be careful about rewarding with food.

For sure.

So. But after dinner, you know, back in St. Louis, before we moved to LA, we had this phenomenon where we end up having a dance competition or dancing together, or it evolved into, like, having rap battles. Right. And so once we got to la, my son has a iPad, and, like, somebody would, like, make a beat, and we go around the table and freestyle. And it got to a point where we actually bought a microphone. And so we passed the microphone around, but we haven't done that in probably a year. We haven't done that practice. Like, our family structure changed. Like, my oldest son moved out For a bit, they moved bag. And driving back from the brunch, we're freestyling in the car, you know what I mean? And it's just like this thing that adds unconsciously, like, I have something to look forward to. It's creativity, you know, it's challenge, it's fun, it's funny. It's, you know, empowering. You know, it's like, has all these ingredients that you look forward to. That family meal. This could be a game that you guys play. I've just talked to a family. They play a board game while they have dinner, which I never thought about, you know, which seemed kind of obvious. This could be, you know, you guys doing some kind of, you know, maybe your family sings together, like playing instruments. Maybe it's just like telling funny stories.

Or choosing a playlist. Each person gets to choose a playlist. If you're not, you know, sets the tone for what's happening.

It's endless possibilities.

Endless possibilities. Yeah. Those are amazing tips. Yeah. I think the no screen thing that you mentioned, Jay smiling in at us. He knows we're talking about him. I think what's really cool is first acknowledging that maybe screens are like the new McDonald's. You know, when we were growing up, it's like we normalized eating at McDonald's. Now we know, like, the horror that. That. That played screens are the new McDonald's. And, you know, if we own in on what's going to happen in the future, because it's being so normalized. You talk a little bit about this in your book also, but, like, the impact on children and the trajectory of the future, I want to point out, like, this is a conscious decision. You and Ann, you set the environment in your house for doing this with your kids because you're imprinting on them so that they carry that on out into the world. Right. Do you share with them, like, the stats. Do you share with them the dark side of what, you know, around all of this?

My son is right there, and this is a part of it. He's around, like, even right now. And we were leaving the house, my wife was like, take your kid to school. I mean, take your kid to work day. But this isn't really, like, work for him or for me. This is. It's our passion. It's what we do. And him being a part of these conversations and listening in on stuff has been obviously very powerful. He's been to tons of my speaking events and just involving him. I interviewed him on his show a couple years ago when he was A tiny little guy, you know, and just involving my. My family. My oldest son is a really incredible strength conditioning coach, personal trainer. I never told him to do that stuff.

Right.

He just decided that that's what he wants to do and it's because he's around it, you know? And so the power of modeling is incredible. The power of creating an environment. As I said earlier, culture is the shared values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors shared by a group of people pass on from one generation to the next. The problem today with so many, like, we might want to change our habits and we had to deal with this stuff. Maybe there's certain things we want to stop doing, stop eating. It's so hard to get somebody to change their habits. That's hurting them when they're in a culture that is feeding them those habits constantly. You can't escape. Takes so much more turbulence to try to change that. Well, what if you create a culture where it's just automatic? It's just what you do. And so for my kids, just being around it, obviously, but also. Yes. Having the conversations, talking about the things, but most importantly, asking questions and letting them share, like, share their voice, share their perspective and not making them wrong. Because we. We can easily. And I went through a phase of, like, you can't eat this. You can't do that. You know, be the. The kid at the birthday party. Like, you know, you don't need that, whatever. And I just like, step back and I just let these things happen because we have a healthy base.

Yeah.

And also, he knows how he feels if he has that. That chitty. I'm going to edit chitty cake. And he knows how he feels. Like he doesn't feel his best. And then he'll want to, like, you know what? And he'll tell me, like, dad, we should really eat a good dinner.

Oh, tonight.

You know what I mean? And so again, it's just stacking conditions and understanding that, you know, our families, our children, our relationships, you know, our significant others. We need a lot less berating and we need more inclusion. We need more patience, and we need more. And this is another tip. We know our family better than anybody. We know what motivates our husband or our wife or our kids more than anybody. But because we're stressed out, we don't want to do it. You got it Right. We also know what demotivates them. And so what we tend to do as a reaction unconsciously is do the thing that demotivates them. Yeah, right. And so we have to take care of ourselves. So we have that space to have that patience in those moments, right? Because I know it motivates my son. I know it motivates my wife. And my wife is, like I said, she is. She is crushing it right now. And this thing is going in our house even this morning. My son told her, and she told me that. He said it yesterday. He told her, like, the secret to your happiness is just listen to your husband. Because she did what I said yesterday, and she was, like, so happy. Like, she was tired. Like, we trip. We did a really tough strength training workout in the morning, and then we went for a pretty long walk later in the day, and it was super hot as well. And so, you know, I went back to work, and then I saw her like an hour later. She's just in the chair, feet are kicked up, and she's just, like, half asleep. And I'm just like, baby, just take a nap. If you're tired, it's okay. Because she said, I'm so tired. Just take a nap. It's okay. And she picked up her phone because what happens a lot of times when we're tired, we'll just start scrolling.

Exactly.

That's resting, right? Instead of. You're not. You're. You're. You're distracting yourself and not getting restored. And so she did it. She went. Took a nap, and she took a shower, and she was, like, so pumped. She was like, I feel. So she got dressed up, she went to the grocery store. She, like, planned for the week. She made dinner. And then she was still, like, bouncing around, like, all happy. And these are things I might have told her before, but in a different way. Like, you know, it is just, like, creating that space and that encouragement. And also, you can recruit your people that you make into this as well. And so my youngest son and my. Both of my sons, they're so affirmative and supportive of their mom. You know, just letting her know when she looks beautiful, letting her know when, you know, she does something, you know, does something that, you know, a quote, good job. Just everything is just affirmative and loving. And let me be clear, we do get on each other's nerves. Of course, we talk a lot of shit.

All right?

But we love on each other so much. And even in the shit talking, like, there's still. It's imbued with love and compassion.

Well, the boys do that because that's modeled from you. Let's just call it as it is. So that's incredible. And I love that you're sharing stories, because I think a lot of people when they get to that point of frustration where they want to give up. Right. Oh, it's too hard. I can't make them do what I want to do or vice versa. You're not giving every person in the house an opportunity. Right. And I love that you hovered on that. Because I've worked with so many people where if they're not one person's into health and wellness, the other partner isn't. One of the partners is still buying the Cheetos and the cereals and stuff like that. The communication to kids, if you say, don't eat this, it's bad for you versus eat this, this is way better for you, it's going to get lost. All their friends are eating the junk food. It tastes way better to them because it's hyper palatable. So giving them other tools to understand how it makes them feel. My son looks at his bowel movements and he knows when he's eating the shitty food, like, he just knows instantly, oh, okay, that was it. What did I eat today? But having open conversations about that, because it's not just about what's healthy and what's not. It's about how it makes you feel. And when you feel better, you make better choices. When you feel better as a family, God, life just gets better. Right.

That part, you know, really quickly with that. Working as a nutritionist for so many years, I also worked as a strength conditioning coach at the university that my wife and I went to. But working with people, that was the number one reason that people gave for why they can't get the results that they were wanting to get the partner again. Whether it was losing weight, whether it was, you know, getting their blood sugar in check, hypertension, whatever they were dealing with, they blamed their family. It's the number one thing. My kids, it's my kids, like, they, you know, I want to do this, but my kids. Right. I gotta. I'm not gonna make two different meals like my kids. They won't. They only eat pigs in a blanket or whatever, you know, Mac and cheese or whatever. Or it's my significant other, you know, it's my wife, it's my husband. Like, they just make it so much more difficult. And what really changed the game for me with helping individuals was helping families.

Yes. Yeah.

Because as you know, you know, there's these sentiments which I, I don't necessarily like saying anymore, but like, you can't be a prophet in your own land.

Yeah.

Right. To where, you know, if I'm trying to, you know, want to help my mom for example, it's just like my mom's not really listening to me because she's like, boy, I changed her diapers. Like, what are you talking about? You know, but when it comes from an external voice is very, very helpful. This is why the show, and this, shows like this are so powerful because you get to share from another perspective. Right. And so being able to incorporate and bring in, like we'll just say that I'm working with a woman, you know, she's, she's a lawyer, her husband, you know, maybe he's a engineer, whatever the case might be. And they've got two kids and she's just like, they're the, they're the problem, right? And they're pointing the finger outward. And I come in instead of just meeting with the, with the, the wife that I'm working with, the woman that I'm working with, I come hang out with their whole family and just, you know, introduce myself, hang out, you know, talk to them a bit. And that personifies me or personalizes me. Right. And this just happened at his tournament when that, when the family came over to me. But in particular it was the mom and she was just like, I've been listening to you for 10 years. And you know, and the husband and son were there and to actually see me and because what the sentiment, as they said, was in the house, like Sean said, that might get on their nerves. Right. You know, and so being able to like actually talk with people and to create a cohesive thing and what I would do is find out what motivates each person. Very practical. Like, so I might find that the, the son is a soccer player and I talk about how their nutrition and their sleep habits can radically improve their performance and put them in a different league than everybody else. Right. I find that leverage point for each family member and it's just like it creates this lasting impact to where literally I get messages to this day of people I work with 10, 15 years, like Sean. Ever since that day or ever since that time that I worked with you, man, you changed the trajectory of my family. And so if we can find leverage points now for people listening, they might not know a Sean or a Mona directly, but what are those things that you can do to where it's coming from someone else's voice or perspective. This could be as simple as like, and I'm going to, since we're here, I'm going to be real. It tends to be guys who are more hard headed.

Yeah, I'll agree.

And she's looking over and so. But also we tend to be more skeptical too. And so I found a great strategy to be like, this guy said something about like, if you, you know, eat this food, like it helps improve your sleep quality, like, what do you think about this? And like maybe give him the paper or, you know, the study or send him the post and just see what you think about that. And then he, he might be like, you know what? Like, yeah, I, what a lot of guys would be like, I knew that already, or whatever, you know, or, you know, I don't know about that. But it can spark a conversation versus you coming in and telling him what to do, which we tend to rebel, you know, but it depends. It's not a man, woman, female, male thing. It depends on her personality, character.

Right.

It depends on our character. But also what I've seen in working with a lot of people is that guys tend to be a little bit more hard headed. And so, yeah, just being able to be like, you know, a little bit more of like, I'm the student here, just like, what do you think, big daddy? You know, and so like put it in their core strategy.

Yeah, I love that. The other part to that though is if there's something around health that you're interested in, if you start searching on your phone, you are part of this algorithm, right? I know there's like a love and hate. You've got to be careful of the algorithm that you're part of. However, if you're talking about these conversations, if you gently send those recipes or articles or inspiration to the other people, change the algorithm. At least it gets the dialogue shifted. Right. So own in on that. Change the algorithm. And I want to point out too that people might not know in your cookbook you have recipes from your family.

Yeah.

And what I love about that in our house, what we do is like one person will choose the food for the night. I want Indian tonight. I want, we're big on taco Tuesdays and, or it's pasta. But people will have a say in what's being given. And I'm calling that out because I think that for a really long time now, women tend to be seen as the ones who kind of are the drivers of wellness in the house. But I think the paradigm's shifting. Like, I really think men want to be part of that and want to be inclusive. And so having a man like you who's a leader and a model for that is a really big deal.

Yes, I 1,000% agree. I 1,000% agree. And coming in that with intention. And so, for example, you know, inviting my kids in on what are we making.

Yeah.

You know, for dinner this week. Right. And that's another buy in for the family dinners. Right. Something to look forward to. So we're doing the planning, you know, what, what, what kind of dessert do you guys want, you know, after dinner? Right. So it might be the cherry yogurt pops that are on the COVID of the book or it might be, you know, the superfood bark that we make as well. So it could be like a buy in on what we're actually preparing. This is another great thing. Again, you know your family better than anybody. What motivates them and so them being a part of deciding what we're gonna eat together. And you know, my wife tends to do that quite a bit of like inviting me in on the conversation. She knows how I am too. You know what I mean? Like, I wanna, you wanna see, I wanna be a part of it. But I've loosened up on that a lot because we've intermingled so much. So we're just like, babe, you know, just like, just pick something, it's fine, you know. And so yesterday, funny enough, and my son had this for dinner. One of the recipes in the book, it's this, it's a Greek bowl with these incredible meatballs and just all these different flavors and flavor sensations. I think a big part of why this book is successful too is that we're big foodies.

Yeah. Oh, you can tell.

And we've accumulated these recipes over the years. And like you just mentioned, like there's a hot chocolate recipe that I make my son all the time. Or that my, my oldest son randomly, at our, you know, previous house, he just randomly made these cookies from like four ingredients.

Amazing.

And it's just like. Okay, that's going in the book. Right? And also my wife and I perfecting some really delicious meals. We used to teach classes and food preparation as well.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah, for years we did that and it got, it got bonkers. Like trying to feed a lot of people in one class. Like, you know, it's like 30, 40.

That's a skill.

It's, it's a lot of work. But you know, again, just inviting people in on the process for sure. This another part of that is inviting your kids in on the process of preparing the food. Yes, this is another big part of the story because right now, somewhere around 30 plus percent of young people don't know how to prepare a single meal. We're Talking like college age kids, like, so, like under, you know, 25 and under and adolescents. So we'll just say 18 to 25 year olds don't even know how to make one meal for themselves. All right. It is a. It's becoming on the endangered species list.

Oh, I believe that.

So what happens, and I share the data on this, is that when they don't know how to prepare food for themselves, they automatically eat more ultra processed foods. And family meals are also on the endangered species list. Only about 30% of American families eat together on a regular basis. Right. This used to be the majority. Now it is extreme minority. And so please invite your kids in, make some recipes together, give them this vital skill to be able to take care of themselves. Because this world, like, it is just gonna be tantalizing them with like all these convenient, easy things. But this can be easy too. Just being able to whip up a couple of things for yourself with real foods can be absolutely life sustaining.

Truly make a recipe book as a family. Right. If I could be doing anything right now, I would travel, pack up my family, travel the world, go to every village and find like the sage, wise older man or woman and like, find all the recipes. Let's document them before we lose it all and like trade it all in for these genetically modified food. Fast food everything. Fast food nation.

You should do that.

Right. Thanks. Okay, good. I feel it out every time with guests. I'm like, oh, you should do that. Okay. It's affirming. And I will to close that topic on men because we do have a lot of male listeners. When my husband, he was inspired on a trip that we had to Morocco. He bought a tagine pot and then just starts making these big tagine pot meals that like a love language. For me, it was like one of the most amazing kind of sexy things for a man to do. So tip for the men out there. I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our sponsor, Poulsetto. If you've been feeling stuck in stress mode lately, I want to share something that's been incredibly supportive for me. It's called Pulsetto, a vagus nerve stimulator that helped me feel more grounded, calm, and rested. As somebody who's always been exploring ways to heal the body through the nervous system, I love that pulsetto doesn't just mask symptoms. It supports your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your body's natural rest and digest state. And the science is so compelling. The vagus nerve connects your brain to your gut and Your heart and your lungs and so much more. So when we stimulate it gently, we're helping the body shift out of fight or flight and into a state where healing and repair can actually happen. What I appreciate most is that it's simple, just four minutes a day. And I've noticed better sleep, less tension and a real sense of calm at the end of really long days. There's no apps, no learning curve, just true physiological support. Chronic stress touches everything. Our energy, mood, sleep, digestion, even how we show up for the people that we love. That's why I'm such a fan of tools like pulsetto that work with your body, not against it. If you've been struggling with chronic stress or poor sleep, this could be exactly what your nervous system needs. Go to pulsetto tech and use Code Mona to save. You can also find the link in our show. Let's go back to, you know, how we eat and who we eat with being important, but also the science around how it drives our cravings and also our metabolism. When you speak to metabolism, we think about the impact of our physiology. Maybe we take it back to the mitochondria. So when we think about our bodies actually utilizing the food as information, what is the impact? Like, how could it, how could it shift our metabolism? How could it shift our food cravings?

Yeah, this, this is multi layered at its core. As soon as you're around other people, in particular people that you have a relationship with that you love and that you care about and they care about you, our biology changes dramatically. So as I mentioned, this is an epigenetic influence. And so one of the things that Also there's over 250 studies that are embedded into the content of the book itself. But I talked about some data affirming how we're at this place now where when I was in college, what I was taught was that genes control your destiny. You know, and if you have a genetic predisposition for a particular disease and you have this, they start looking for all these genes that cause disease. And that was the thing. Like genes are the reason, like this is the price. Yeah, your lifestyle kind of matters, whatever. But it was all really, all the chips went on the deck of genes control your health today. We know this and we're so far from that that upwards of 99% of disease manifestations. Unless you're born with a true genetic defect. Unless you're born with a true genetic defect. Most of us get here with pretty healthy genes and we don't have genes. And one of my mentors And I've had multiple conversations with him about this is cell biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton. And him being really the pioneering voice in epigenetics. He told me, sean, we don't have genes for disease. We. And I was just like, whoa, that doesn't feel. There's ruffling my feathers. He's like, no, no, no, we don't have genes that code for disease. Disease genes can manifest or present certain symptoms. Right. And so a good example of this might be type 2 diabetes.

Yeah.

Which is obviously of epidemic proportions today, where we have around half of the US population diabetic or pre diabetic. And it was somewhere around, you know, 30 to 40%. And this is a. This is a, quote, adult onset diabetes. Right. So you're not born with this, but something happens, something happens along the way. And what happens is, for example, we'll just say that one of your primary causative agents, this epigenetic influence, is ultra processed foods. Right. Extreme amounts of sugar and carbohydrates that your genes never interacted with for thousands and thousands of years prior. And now you're getting exposed to. And now our body is responding and making an adaptation to that exposure to keep you alive.

Yeah.

It's changing the way that it operates to help you to survive. But then we blame this stupid disease like body. Why are you doing this thing? When we were exposed to something that was making us to adapt to this condition. And then, of course, what do we do? Instead of removing the cause, we start to treat the symptom.

You got it.

Get into this vicious circle, the whole cycle. And so. And then we blame, oh, you've got, you've got diabetes in your family, you know, and yes, that absolutely plays a part, but it is a tiny, tiny part. We know that the vast majority of. And what he shared with me was that, you know, we've got the Human Genome Project. We were expecting to have all these genes and come to find out, like, there's certain varieties of corn that have way more genes than humans do. But what we have is incredible diversity in how genes can be expressed. One gene can have thousands of different potential expressions. And that's what he shared with me based on epigenetic inputs. So your environment, your diet. But every time I talk about these things as well, and this is exclusive stuff right here. Yeah, every time I talk about those things, which I was studying, nutrigenomics, nutrigenetics. But he'd be like, Sean, no, no, no, no, no, no. The mind first. The number one influence over Your gene expression is your mind. And it just like, oh, it's so hard for me to like really accept that. But then as I dove deeper and deeper into the data over the years, every thought we think has correlating chemistry that's instantaneously produced. And so if we're having thoughts of anxiety or something that's pissing us off or something that we just feel joyful about, we feel that feeling because there's a change in our chemistry. With that said, and to put a bow on this and to tie it all back together, when we're around people that we care about, there's a deep, deep change that happens with our biochemistry. This is unconscious. Just our thoughts. Even if we're pissed off at them for whatever reason, if we know that we love this person or our family members, our chemistry changes and it elicits more of what we would refer to as like anti aging, you know, expressions of certain things. And so what we are doing, when we stack conditions in our favor with our environment, with our family members, and understanding that we need this for healthy genetic expression, we need each other more than ever. We know the ramifications with social isolation. It's deadly. And we know that being with people that we care about, having healthy social bonds is the number one from the longest running study on humans. Number one determinant of how long you're going to live is your relationships. And it's because it's impacting you at the level of your genesis. And so I hope that that answered the question.

It does answer the question completely. And I love that you took it there. I'm doing my master's in quantum healing, and Dr. Lipton's one of the professors in that. And I have to say, looking back, do you not believe after your diagnosis, if you didn't believe that you could heal done? If I believed that I was gonna have a heart condition for the rest of my life, Prescription after prescription, I wanna throw that back at the audience because so often we witness people in our family and our circle getting sick. We believe that it could be part of us. And this is what gets me with longevity right now. We talk about longevity in our circle as well. So much of it is fear based, like the fear of getting older, the fear of getting sick. And it's like, well, are you taking the supplements and the vitamins and working out because it makes you feel good and you're happy, or is it driven by fear? And the fear is the emotion of what's in your body. We have to switch our Perspective and change our lens. So I think belief is something that's so huge. And going back to something that you said earlier with HeartMath, just thinking about someone that you love changes your physiology. I took those old school epigenetics tests, you know, within school and nutrition school and stuff like that too. And there's a completely different lens in how we understand epigenetics today. Do you recommend that people do their epigenetic testing?

That's such a good question. Oh, my gosh. Okay. So I just did what again, at this current time, appears to be the most advanced panel on. You know, it's like 110 different biomarkers. And in addition to that, you can get like CT scans and all this stuff to come up with your biological age. This is where we are again, I think there's. Yes, we have these objective measurements, but some of that being a quote, biological age is still subjective. Like, there's nothing that's invented today that could tell you, like, how old you are biologically. But we can see some very close proximations. Right. And so I just did that. Cool. I am almost 8 years younger biologically than I am chronologically, which is pretty dope, according to this. And also I see this room for improvement. Like, there's this one surprising nutrient deficiency that I had. I was just like, what? And by. And this one was a controller of so many other things. And so just being able to focus on that can make me even more basically slow my rate of aging. Let's not say reverse my age per se, but slow my rate of aging dramatically. And so I was actually one of the keynote speakers for one of these big, you know, biohacking events, like the big one, you know, Dave. But I was brought in to be like the grounded person, you know what I mean? Just like, listen, I know you guys want to take all this shit in the other room and do all these treatments, but just go for a walk. Yeah. So I'm coming and I'm sharing the data on this. And, you know, and so it's. The approximation is so much closer. Right. We overcomplicate things because of fear. Right. And so I'm very big on practicality and doing that and getting that blood work done. I think it speaks to some people. Like, my wife is very analytical.

Yeah.

With that. When it comes to that stuff, self quantification motivates her immensely. I don't want to do that. I want to pay more attention and advocate for people to pay attention to how you feel. God, I love that pay attention to how you look, how you feel, how you perform. Just see yourself, right? Pay attention. Like am I doing something? And then like I'm hella puffy the next day. Like your body's telling you you don't need a blood test, you don't need like this complicated thing to tell you. Like that thing didn't really jive with you. Right? But we're so externally focused today, so many things are pulling our attention outside of our bodies. I know this intimately. We can have all the studies in the world. And by the way, you can go and look at my track record. I've got stuff from almost 20 years ago where I'm using peer reviewed data to affirm a certain point which has become popular today. Wow, I did that. I'm going to share this with you. I haven't really talked about this before. I did that because when I started to like speak at these different events and I go like speak to the biology department at a university and I've been in this FIELD for like 23 years now, I felt inadequate because I didn't finish the pre med track. I got, I got out of there because I hated it. Life brought me back to studying health. And so, and I'm coming at this with a different perspective of overcoming a so called incurable disease. That the way that you're teaching is. It put me into that position, right, with the Nocebo effect, right. This is incurable what I have. And that made everything exponentially worse. And so I'm coming in to speak to this department. Maybe I think at the time I was like talking about telomeres and whatnot, which I know, you know, Elizabeth Blackburn and Alyssa Epel and like that whole thing. But you know, I felt like I've got to come with the data just so they listen to me about practicality. I did it with a purpose because I didn't have a lab coat on and I'm just, you see me like I'm just a cool guy, you know, just, you know, I show up how I am authentically. And so that's why I was using published data to affirm a point or something practical. Now it's like used in everything. You know, our friends and colleagues use this template and many of these folks and they've sat in my office or in my studio and they share with me like I was listening to your show for years prior to what I'm doing and I could see that template and it's a great model because it provides some verification for you to Tell a story and to empower people. But we're at a point now where these studies can mess people up.

Yes.

Because that study is not the end all be all that study might say this thing that is completely wrong for you. And an end of one experiment is more than enough. Like you could be doing something that works remarkably for you, that doesn't seem to work for anybody else that, you know, got it. You're not going to honor that because of this study says that this isn't good for you. You know, we've got to take back our agency and to. Yes, we can have. And I've shared a bunch of studies, we can have that data. But the most important data, more powerful than any of these studies, is the data that your body is presenting to you literally every single microsecond of your life. If you just take a moment and.

Tune in, you got it. God, I love that. That literally, word for word is the inspiration for this podcast. How do we merge that ancient belief system, I say, with modern medicine? Right. There's so many gifts to modern medicine. Having this information is really, really nice. But as much as we can talk about root cause healing, any doctor who's getting that lab report and they're seeing an increase in liver enzymes or lipids that are elevated, that doesn't give you root cause, doesn't help you understand any differently. You've got to go out and figure out what the source is for you and how you can, you know, switch tracks. And for healing 99% of the people that I work with, it starts with the supplements and the food plan and that because that's what their condition to thinking, then it turns into, oh, no, that doesn't feel good for my body. I want to do this instead. Right. And to bring that back to everything that you've said, I think the foundation of what you're speaking to today, it comes down to an emotion that you. It's a state that you're setting within your body. And that state starts with community and with the state that you're putting your body in when you're with people that you love, when you're eating with other people instead of isolation.

Absolutely. And one last point with this is that why are relationships so impactful? Yes. The leading researcher said it was stress metabolizing stress, which is dope. Okay, got it. One of the things that I feel again and of one understanding of this is that. And this is going to be obvious once I say it, but we don't have published data on this. Your relationships Impact what you eat more than anything else. Your relationships impact your sleep habits more than anyone else. Your relationships impact your exercise habits more than anything else. I said anyone else. But anything else, you know that your husband is going to impact your sleep, your wife is going to. Your kids are going to impact your more than anything else. So again, your relationships are the tip of the spear. It's that thing that. It's the umbrella under which everything else sits because it impacts everything so much. So what if you get the relationships right? So it automatically makes everything easier invest in that thing because it's going to be influencing you, period. You can't get away from it. And there are like, of course, if you have enough will, you can be that person in your family that gets out and goes to the gym and gets the hell away from your family. Like, this is my whatever, you know, I'm dedicated to this thing. But what I found to be more beneficial is instead of dad going to this magical place come called the gym and coming back, like, happier and, you know, sweaty or whatever, just like, where you been? You know, it's more like, let me show them what I'm doing.

Yeah, right.

Let me do this in front of them. Let's train together. And so I intentionally did that early on. And to this day, like, my son is sitting in the other room. He's 13 years old. I don't have to tell him. He's just gonna get out and train. He's gonna shoot around, he's gonna do some exercise. He's gonna ask like, what can I do? And even if we do game together, by the way, which I had a terrible gaming day yesterday. But after that we go outside and we play in the real world. You know, we went outside and played horse, you know, shot around. And we have this balance. And he invites that balance because of our culture that we've created. And so it helps to affirm. It makes everything so much easier when you get the culture right. And so I wanted to share that and also if I can close with some tips to go back with, you know, this, this family eating phenomenon, today more than ever, if I pull out my phone and you as well, we've got all this stuff on our calendar that's scheduled. Isn't our family more important? Our family is more important than any of that stuff. But we usually don't put them on our schedule. Schedule it Three meals per week. Is that minimum effective dose seen across multiple studies? I just shared a couple. Schedule it, make it sacred, put it on your calendar. And so this, whatever that looks like for your family. It doesn't have to be dinner, by the way. This could be brunch on Sunday like we just did and then a couple of meals per week. This could be coffee with friends, right? I'm not talking outside of your family if you don't have kids, if you don't. Friends count too.

Yes.

All right. Shout out to friends. Shout out to Ross and all those guys, Rachel. But friends, friends count too. And having that inter, that, that very powerful interaction. So this could be getting coffee with your friends. Schedule it. This could be, you know, maybe you have family dinners Monday, Wednesday, then brunch on Sunday or family dinner Monday through Thursday. Then. One of the things, we haven't been eating together as frequently because basketball season. We've been watching a ton of basketball while him playing basketball and watching basketball while having dinner. And it's just been like it's a season for that with us right now. But we have a deep anchor in us eating together and talking. And even outside of that, if we don't have that time of sitting down eating together, we have time of us seeing each other and talking. Like even a walk over here, five minute walk.

Right.

Just me and my son for sure. You know, and so having those touch points. So schedule it. Make it real. Schedule it. That's, that's tip number two. Because we talked earlier about having something of value attached to the meal. Right? So find out what that thing is. Make it fun. Make it. It doesn't have to necessarily be like super fun but like something rewarding, something connecting. It could be even a tough conversation. You know, it could be. Apparently my mother in law used to ask my wife and her sister when they were little, like littles, like, you know, what's the meaning of life type questions and having philosophical conversations. Right.

What a gift.

So whatever that looks like for you. And as we've talked about multiple times, make it a phone free zone.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Another study done on children, minority children who are generally in the context of a low income environment like I come from, I can literally count on my hands how many times I sat down and ate a meal with my parents. Okay. Outside of a holiday. It just didn't happen. It wasn't a part of my reality. But I know if my parents knew, if they deeply knew that eating with their kids was going to protect them against illness, they would have done it. There weren't bad people. We just didn't know. And we're living in just chaos. Essentially. We'd eat a lot at the Same time, but we just grab and go, right, you know, get in front of the screen. I sat down to eat with my brother and sister quite a bit, but I couldn't wait to get back outside or go to the tv, play a video game, whatever the case might be. And so we know that our phones are. Our devices are dividing us. Our devices are divisive, divisive, divisive. And so even having the phone in I in eyesight and I shared a study in the Esmarter cookbook actually on this pulls away attend like literally strapping people up and monitoring their brain activity. It pulls away attention from the moment because your brain knows if it sees that phone, there's so many goodies in there. And so make it a phone free zone. Because that study on these children found that when parents or caregivers ate with their kids four meals per week, didn't matter which meal they ate five or more servings of fruits and vegetables five days a week. And significantly less ultra processed foods, namely chips and soda. But what they noted in the study was this. If the TV was never or rarely on, there's something about having that thing in between everybody. Plus the marketing to the children, children who watch it was like who Every hour that a child is watching television led to a consumption of 127 more calories.

Oh, I believe per day. Yeah.

And it's that of course it's from ultra processed foods and the marketing and those kind of things. So with all that said, make it a phone free zone, tech free of course, put a playlist on whatever the case might be.

That's fine. Yeah. That's a background.

Make that a time to be present with each other. That time is for you and it's so healing for everybody.

Is connection the missing ingredient to everyone's wellness plan?

Absolutely.

So number one, number one, let's just reiterate that. So family meals linked to 35% just three times a week linked to 35%. Lower risk of disordered eating, better school performance, lower obesity rates in kids. This is one of the studies that you, that you pulled out. We have to really own this and I think that we need to model it when we're out in the world and talk about it with our friends because it's the only way that we're going to see change. Because using a screen is just going to become more normalized moving forward. Right. So great tip. All right. I want to get some more things out of you as we wrap things up. You've written that connection is one of the most overlooked ingredients in your wellness plan. But talk to us, like, what are some of the trends that you're seeing out in the world in terms of food consumption for children that are really impacting their physical and their emotional development?

Yes. So this goes back to that study we mentioned at the beginning from jama. So the average child in the United states right now, 20 year study, is eating almost 70% ultra processed foods. That is absolutely atrocious and it's unacceptable. This doesn't make any sense at all except the fact that the culture that we have has normalized the consumption of these fake foods. All right, now, the trend is that what I'm an advocate for is just don't go cold turkey. Let's change the ratio. Even though this could be easily framed as like, I'm making this as bad food or the villain. Humans are awesome. Like, we've created some really cool stuff that's tasty. We've got these brilliant food scientists who are doing all this incredible innovation to make foods taste a certain way. We can acknowledge what that is, appreciate it. Let's not villainize it and just have more of real stuff that we know. Again, we've been eating for thousands of years and save some space for a little fun stuff. You know, quote, fun stuff for. For which even as I say that, yeah, eating real food is fun as hell too. But just like, let's not villainize the Twinkie. And I'm saying that because I've thought a lot about this. Like, I'll contemplate on Twinkie for, like, just. I'll go on a walk and think about it for an hour. It has value. It has its own value. You know, if this was an apocalypse situation, like, that Twinkie could keep you going for a day. I just watched. We're going right now. Since my son is 13, we're going through the archive of Denzel Washington movies. And we just watched Book of Eli, okay? And the movie starts off with him, spoiler alert, eating a cat. All right? He eats a cat. And I'm just like, in that situation, like, if he came across a Twinkie, right? I mean, that is literally like cause for celebration. Like, for real. We're going to throw a party. We found a box of Twinkies. So that could be around for 100 years because it never dies. Basically. It's like designed to be, you know, it's fake. It never had any life force to it. And, you know, but it can sustain you. It has its value. And I'm open to the possibility that all this ultra processed food we're consuming is mutating us in some beneficial way. Okay. Maybe we're getting X Men powers. I don't know. I'm just saying I'm throwing it out there. We don't follow up on that, chances are it's really messing us up extremely, extremely bad. But I'm open to that. And I'm setting it up like this to say we don't want to villainize this thing because it tends to push people towards the things we tell them to stay away from.

Right.

Let's focus on adding in, shifting the ratio. I'm a big advocate of 80. 20. Right. Eat 80% real foods, make that the basis of your diet, and save that 20% for, you know, whatever you want to dibble and dabble in.

Yeah.

All right. So that's kind of just one of the big, like, mindset shifts to take with that.

A Twinkie could bring someone a lot of joy. And if it's the joy that's the rainfall in your body, I totally get it. But to your point, it's like once you get to the part of doing the healing where the foundation is solid, I think our bodies are so resilient that we can handle it. It's. It's when it becomes in excess. So what about the tips? Like the parents who are listening who were like, yeah, but Sean, you know, there's goldfish everywhere at my school. Cheerios are there every single morning. There's coffee cake. And, you know, the school's saying, it's good for me. How do we make parents understand that it's really up to them to make the change? I get hate mail on goldfish crackers, by the way. I'm so anti goldfish, but I get hate mail on it. But what are some tips for those people?

The first of all, the power is in your hands. You know, so much of our culture has been outsourcing our kids, everything to other people, and we just need to be honest about that.

Yeah.

Now, this doesn't mean we have to be, you know, live on, you know, off the grid and, you know, homeschool our kids and all this stuff and more power to people who choose to do these things. But this doesn't have to be a either or situation. I am a firm believer that it's a both and world. And our responsibility, our blessing, our greatest gift is to be able to create that foundation and set the template for these kids. Right. And so do the things that we can. We know that at school. Yeah, they're going to have. There's going to be candy, there's going to be this, there's going to be that. But what are you doing at home?

You got it.

Like, let's really stack conditions, make sure we get all the good stuff we can when they're at home and find creative ways to do that and also lean into innovation. Right. And so goldfish crackers. There are, quote, healthier iterations of these.

Absolutely.

Of everything, less of everything now. It is insane. Anything that you could think of, there's a healthier version of that thing now because humans were like, yo, I really love pizza, but I know it totally messed me up. So they're creating these, like, healthier versions of anything that you could think of. Right. Just yesterday. Wait, wait. On Father's Day, we got. This is a. This is a plug for our favorite YouTuber, Ryan Trahan.

All right.

That my son and I will watch his videos together. But he's got a company that he created. This young kid, he's like, I'm gonna guess he's probably 25, but he created a candy company called Joyride.

Oh, yeah, of course.

And so it has no artificial colors, significantly less sugar. But. But kids really love it. And they love him.

Right.

And so he's wanting to make his candy the number one candy at Targets. He's number two right now. But it's just like, even these kids that are getting some of these ideas and truths about nutrition, they're trying to find a way, like, hey, I'm a kid. I still like candy. I want these sour strips and twists and things like that. But can we do it a little bit better and not hurt ourselves so much? And also understand that's just candy. Like, let me eat real food as a primary thing in my diet and it's okay to have some of this stuff. So be an advocate for better than right. And you can be an advocate at your, at your school, at your kids school as well. You can be an influence. You could suggest things, you could talk about things. You can get other parents together. Right. They have meetings for this kind of stuff. Or you can put them together yourself and you can change. And I'm saying this from a place of experience. Some of my friends, Kelly Starrett, Dr. Kelly Starrett and his wife, Juliet Starrett, incredible coaches. They've got standing desks at their kids schools.

Incredible. Really?

They got standing desks put in.

Wow.

Yeah. And you know, again, it's just because of who they are and the influence and having these conversations, things are changing.

Yeah.

It's happening right now, and we could be a part of that change.

Beautiful. It's happening. I really do feel it's happening. On the flip side, then let's talk about what are some of your favorite superfoods to support not only your metabolic health, but just overall, your emotions, your sleep, everything that you've kind of poured your. Your life work into. What are some of your favorite staples at home?

That is so tough.

I know, I know. But I want to give people an action list of what to go and purchase. Now that they're not going for the Twinkies, what are they buying?

Well, that's a big bridge. As. As my son would tell you. Like, I'm a very. I think a lot of dads tend to be really great breakfast guys.

Yes, he is.

You know, so in. In the book, for example, I. I shared my breakfast sandwich. Right. And I. I was inspired to do this years ago because of. Because of the movie Big Daddy with Adam Sandler.

Yeah.

And he took the kid who, you know, he was thinking that this was his kid, and, like, you know, it was a whole crazy situation. But anyways, trying to go to McDonald's to get breakfast, you know, and they get there at 11, and he comes to find out the breakfast stopped serving at 10:30. It was a whole thing. And I've ever since watching that, I felt that feeling like, oh, I hate when they stop breakfast. And I love, like, the egg McMuffin and all those kind of things at breakfast sandwiches. So I made an upgraded breakfast sandwich. That's the name of it. And my son absolutely loves it. It's fire. It's just. It's so delicious. And, you know, just looking at some of those ingredients of what would come in a typical, you know, breakfast sandwich. And we could. Instead of the typical, highly refined, whatever kind of bread, you could use some sourdough. Right, Right. And there are multiple studies of affirming benefits of sourdough bread, by the way. And there was a time I was just like, no bread, no bread.

I know.

It's not about no bread because sometimes, again, we go all or nothing. And working at a university for so many years, I got to work with people from all over the world. I mean, from France, from Korea, from Uganda, from, you know, Brazil. Like, the list goes on and on. And I started asking everybody about fermented foods in their diet. And every culture had cultured foods.

Absolutely everyone.

And some of them were fermented bread.

Yeah.

Like Ethiopia. Right. There's like, this fermented bread. Right. And I'm just like, oh, I'm late, but bread is bad. You know, like. And because of my teaching and then my further education that I was choosing to have, I just, like, X'd it out instead of looking at the potential benefits and so that this could be. You know, eggs are one of those foods that have gone in and out of favor and nutrition for so long, but humans have been eating eggs for tens of thousands for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because it has a remarkable concentration of certain nutrients that are very hard to find.

Good for you. Yes.

Like choline.

Choline for your liver.

Right, right. And, you know, I can go on and on also, again, that protein content is very, very digestible. That egg, the egg white protein, part of that, of the egg. And by the way, they come together. So, you know, but humans, you know, and so, you know, just getting some. And we just went through a weird egg epidemic recently. I know the egg shortage, you know, like, there's. What is that about? You know, but just again, minding certain things like that being mindful of the oils that you're cooking in. These oils are one of the cultural contagions. And funny enough, there's a lot of debate going on about these oils and, quote, vegetable oil. And I've been talking about this for 15 years now, maybe longer, but some of my incredible friends and colleagues, one of them is Dr. K. Shen, and she's really the foremost authority on, quote, vegetable oils. And she's like, it's not the fact. And there is data affirming, like, they could be helpful, but there's also data affirming that they are very, very toxic. And you. Anybody could just go to Dr. Google or go to YouTube and just look at how are vegetable oils made? How's canola oil made? And just marvel in all of the toxic chemicals that are used to try to turn that canola plant or corn into this oil. It is ungodly. You'll never want to use just the deodorizing agents, you know, the solvents. You know, just the fact of, like, what she shared was that essentially it's not the end. It's not just looking at the end product. It's understanding that the oxidation is happening in the process of it. And so you're consuming essentially oxidation in a bottle once it gets to you.

Yeah.

And we know that oxidation is one of those core components that we're talking about longevity and in accelerating our aging. That's. Oxidation is a big one of the one of the ingredients of that. And so you don't want that to be an ingredient of your food if you can avoid it. Now, again, it's okay if you come across it if it didn't, whatever. But. And so many restaurants are taking it out now, finally. And when I was in college talking to, you know, clients that I was working with, I used to carry in my book bag, like, this cereal bar that I used to think was super healthy, this Kellogg cereal bar. And it had, I know those vegetable oil by partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. And then I showed them this article that I came across where it was getting banned from restaurants in New York again. This is like 15, 20 years ago.

Yeah, Right.

And so I was sharing this. I'm just like, this is in everything. And for it to be banned. And now different restaurants are taking it out as well. You know, just changing your cooking oil, upgrading that. What if humans use the longest? This will give me to another food that I love. Okay, I'll share this. All olive oil.

Yeah.

Thousands of years of use. It's olives. And you press the oil out. That's what extra virgin olive oil is. You know, cold.

Cold pressed. Yeah.

Oleocanthal rich extra virgin olive oil. And researchers at Auburn actually discovered this. This has this remarkable ability to potentially heal the blood brain barrier. All right, so what they affirmed was that this oil has the ability to reduce neuroinflammation. So inflammation in the brain. Why does this matter? This might be, as far as, like, specific physical ailments. This might be the biggest concern that nobody knows about. Some researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that individuals who had higher amounts of visceral belly fat had higher rates of inflammation in their brain, and people with higher inflammation in their brain had higher amounts of visceral belly fat that occur. And they didn't know, like, which one was causing which, but they saw that they're directly connected.

Okay.

And we know that this has a lot to do with, like. And the thing is, like, how do you know if you have brain inflammation? Your brain is very protective. Like, I don't have a headache.

Yeah.

Or whatever. There's no. They don't. Your brain doesn't even have pain receptors, by the way. So when you find out there's a problem, it's oftentimes way too late. And I'm saying that to say that if we're carrying around a lot of excessive fat, chances are your brain is inflamed. Olive oil has the potential to help to put that fire out that's incredible.

Incredible.

That is incredible. And help to heal the blood brain barrier, because how the brain gets inflamed is stuff is breaking that barrier down. Stuff is getting into your brain that shouldn't be there. And this, the number one culprit is this absurd, horrendous amount of sugar that's getting delivered to our brains that we never evolved, having. And our brain has more gates for sugar than anywhere else. Because through our evolution, if we came across something that was dense in sugar, we're gobbling it all up, but now it's like ample. And so what's happening is insulin resistance taking place in the brain. Right. Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, I'm. Right now I'm talking to the leading expert in the world on Parkinson's on Friday. And just like how sugar is just tearing people's brains up as well. So again, extra virgin oleocanthal rich extra virgin olive oil is one. So I mentioned eggs, I mentioned sourdough. I think that's pretty cool.

Those are great staples. But again, you're going back to foods that are staples and basics. Right. When we went back to Denmark, where I'm from and where my mom's from, the waitress that we had at a restaurant, she's like, what is with your fascination with not eating bread over there? We eat bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Everyone's tall, thin, fit. So, yeah, it's not the bread, it's what we put into it. And the sugar thing, too. Right. I wish people would make the connection between insulin resistance. Everything's connected in the body, right. So if one part of your body's being compromised, it's going to impact the other. When we think about our gut microbiome, our heart and our brain, things that play such a massive role with our health, but we don't necessarily feel them. And if doctors look at you and assume that you're healthy, they're not checking anything for them. So just take ownership of what you're consuming. And to bring this full circle to how we started is whatever foods that you're going to go out and buy after this episode, look at the back of the ingredients, right? If you understand the ingredients that go into it, then. Then your body will too.

Yeah. And eat more foods that don't have ingredients.

No ingredient labels. How about that? Right?

Yeah.

All right. To wrap things up, I want to get to just a question from Sonia and I wanted to get your feedback, because right now on social media, hormones are having their moment. And Sonia wanted to ask about the best foods that she can consume in her perimenopause journey. And not that this is necessarily like your bucket, I know you've had so many experts on your show, but you live with a wife who's gone through this journey and you know about the impact of food. So let's just maybe put a lens over this on the best foods for hormones.

Okay? Yes. So I'm very grateful to say, you know, even getting close to 10 years ago, like Dr. Lisa Moscone, who's a leading researcher on women's health, but she's a neuroscientist and really has kind of helped to elevate this conversation about perimenopause and menopause and women's health. And, you know, Dr. Anna Kabeca, I can go on and on and on so talking to some of the very best and brightest minds in this subject matter. But again, I'm not a woman, so it's very. So I try to lift those voices up. And this subject matter is uber complicated because every person, let alone every woman, is unique. And so those things. What we do know is that here in the United States, menopause symptoms versus, we'll just say, you know, a certain population in Japan that was studied, actually. And Anna Kabeka talked about this with me, where we might see somewhere around 20% of them having like, very notable symptoms, or we see the opposite here of like 80% having like, very noticeable, not noticeable, notable, life disrupting, difficult symptoms that they're dealing with. Why would this culture not have the same issue? And it's because of our environment. Right. With that said, food is a big part of our environment and obviously something to help us maybe not so obvious with this transition. It's not as much about what to eat, it's what not to eat. And when you're having difficulties with your hormones and with your energy. In our culture, we have this tendency to lean more towards sugar and, you know, just to make us feel better. And why that is is that we get a little bit like a serotonin uptick. Like it just makes us feel good, you know, when we're having some sugar temporarily. And so being mindful of that and leaning more towards, as Dr. Kabeca shared with me, leaning more towards really high quality fats, nourishing fats, and making sure in particular that you're getting ample amounts of omega 3 fatty acids. Like, this is. This is critical, top tier, like top three things.

Epadha. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why this is. And one really fascinating study was looking at, because with Menopause. I know this is experienced as a body thing. So much of it has to do with what your brain is doing.

Okay, Absolutely.

And so this really interesting study found, and I cited this in the book as well, found that individuals who had the lowest intake of omega 3s, DHA and EPA, had the highest rate of brain shrinkage.

Wow.

They were losing volume of their brain. And so it is like. That should be scary. That should be scary. When I was working as a nutritionist early on, I was telling all my clients to like, there was like two things I really. The majority of people I'd recommend was one was magnesium, the other was Omega 3s. But I was telling them, you know, get your flaxseed oil, get your hemp oil, get your, you know, flaxseeds, chia seeds. But that's ala. Yeah. This is something that wasn't taught in my expensive university education. There's multiple forms of all this stuff. We put a small label over. There's multiple forms of vitamin C, there's multiple forms of B12, there's multiple forms of calcium. I can go on and on. When you take that multi. Which I'm not saying you shouldn't, what are you getting? Are you getting the, the version of that thing that your body is looking for? We could find that in food more readily. But my point being, ALA is more of an energy substrate or energy potential to run processes in the body. ALA is awesome. That's the plant version of these omega 3s, DHA, docasahexanoic acid and EPA apentaenoic. Wait, what is, what is EPA?

God, it's been years.

Docasa, hexanoic acid and ecosa pentaenoic acid. Boy. Yes. These are animal derived versions of these nutrients. Generally. Be clear. Okay, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

The difference is ALA again, processes. Epa, DHA can be used as structural fats for the body. Structural fats for your brain. You can literally use it to make your brain cells for signal transduction so your brain cells can talk to each other, which is kind of important.

Fascinating.

ALA can't do that. This is why dha, because when I talked about losing brain volume, we're talking about losing connection. That's what creates the volume of the brain, is more connection to plasticity of the brain. It's not from generating new neurons per se. We know that that can happen in certain parts of the brain, the hippocampus, but overall it's not something that's really seen in the data yet. We know that the brain grows in volume due to the connections. And you lose those connections when you don't get enough DHA and epa. All right, please. So where are we going to find this really cool study? Journal Neurology found that one seafood meal per week. One seafood meal per week dramatically increases cognitive performance. So we know that fatty fish. We know that, you know, there's various forms of, you know, shellfish and shrimp and things like that. And by the way, I'm going to give a vegan option.

Thank you.

Okay, Absolutely. But this is where humans have been getting it throughout our evolution, predominantly. But it's not just seafood because some populations weren't around the sea.

Right.

There.

Studies too, on red meat now, right?

Yes. So like bison, you know what I mean? It's going to have a higher ratio of that, of course. Beef, eggs, another source. So, yeah, it's packaged in animal foods predominantly now. Okay, let's get to the real. So talking with the premier scientists, neuroscientist, who's looking at the brain and seeing the impact. So I'm not just. This isn't just hearsay. Dr. Lisa Moscone, she said that it's not the. It's not the fish that that's the highest source of omega 3s and DHA and EPA. It's the fish eggs.

Got it.

Caviar. So caviar.

Okay.

Salmon roe.

Right.

She's just like, this can grow up with that, you know, 20, 50 times as much.

Fascinating.

And this is why they're so prized. It's so expensive.

Right, right.

Because of this impact on the brain. Like, somebody figured this out a long time ago. So I was super weirded out by that, coming from where I come from. But, you know, there's great ways you could fit stuff like that in. There's supplements, things like that.

It's probably cheaper than supplement, like a high quality supplement. Right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Salmon roe is. Is out there on the streets. But again, you don't want to get on the streets.

Yeah.

Reputable source. But then a fish oil, of all the stuff that we're talking about, fish oil has the most data on it. It does, it does for me. It's a really sketchy industry right now in particular, but fish oil has the most studies affirming this. Krill oil. Krill might be my favorite is what I recommend the most because it's a little. It helps with if our ethics a little bit more. It's a microscopic shrimp micro emphasis. Microscopic. And sometimes again, we're doing this based on our ethics and what we want to do for the planet. And, and for the animal kingdom, if we're being honest, like, if you lick the air, you're like, probably killing more sentient beings that, you know, like, you know, like again, it's a microscopic shrimp. It's very rich in astaxanthin. Okay. And this very powerful antioxidant is protective of those omega 3s.

Right.

And so the studies on krill oil are remarkable. Better than fish oil, if anything. Again, I already talked about how important this is for your brain. And if we're talking about this menopause conversation, if you're taking a vegan protocol, you absolutely must. After this recording is done, after you finish listening to this, get yourself an algae oil, like yesterday. Get an algae oil. We know that the, the omega 3s that we're looking for, DHA and EPA are there. What we don't have right now is a lot of clinical data to affirm the assimilation connection with the human body. So I'm not saying that it's there or not there as far as like the benefits. Don't chance it. We don't want to wait around.

Exactly.

Get yourself an algae oil like yesterday. All right. We all need these omega 3s. We need to be proactive in this. And our brains are at stake. And also the evolution of our hormones are heavily dependent on these fats.

You got it. And I think we're all deficient. And look for wild sources for sure. And Sonia, thank you for that question. I think it's something that, that we all need. So thanks for closing in on that. Thank you for being here today.

It's my pleasure.

I'm so grateful for you last two rapid fire questions. If you could leave our listeners with one takeaway that you're most excited about for the future, what would it be.

Getting people hanging out together. Yeah, you know, AI is here. AI is listening right now, like AI is. I don't know what AI is thinking, but the thing is our lives as AI is integrating itself more and more into our culture and more things that humans have been doing that AI is going to be doing. And it's just, it is what it is. There's no stopping it. Even if I might want to, what that's going to do is lead more time for us to do something. And as if things are going now, that's going to mean more time for people to be in that meta universe online and jacked into the matrix, honestly. And I get conjured up ideas right now as I'm sitting here. My son is in the other room of that movie, Ready Player One, right where people, like, are getting on virtual to experience life and experience whatever you can imagine, really anything. And that in of itself is very alluring. But what we know about humans is that, again, we need each other. And so my. My proposition for everybody is to make it your mandate to be more human than you've ever been. All right? That stuff is awesome. My family and I, we went and did a virtual, like, video game place, whatever. It was amazing. It was awesome. But we don't want to live there because chances are, as things have been affirmed to us now, that is going to be a detriment to your health if that is a majority of what you're doing and where you live. Get offline more, create, connect, be again as human as possible. Move your body, explore, have fun, see the things, you know, go outside of your environment as much as you can. And this is coming from somebody who didn't get on a plane till I was 25. It was the first time I got on a plane. And because I had no aspirations of leaving, you know, the St. Louis hood that I lived in, you know, but get outside of your environment, experience life. This is our chance to be more human, to create, to connect. We're going to need each other. I don't know how quickly this is going to happen, but it's going to come a time in the near future where we're up against some insurmountable odds from technology and us in some way. I'm not trying to conjure up a Terminator scenario, but we're going to need to band together. We should start that process now. Love each other, respect each other, spend time together in the real world. So that encompasses a lot more than two things. I think so. I don't know.

You were such a model of that. Everything from your content to the guests that you have on to your cookbook, to if you don't have eat smarter or sleep smarter, make sure you go and get that. And I couldn't agree more. It's connection. Connection to yourself, to others, to your food, to your environment, to your loved ones. Thank you for modeling that today. Thank you so much.

Of course. It's my honor. Thank you.