206 Dan Pardi: The Sneaky State of Food Science

Black and white creates certainty and borders, right? There are bright lines for us to cross and not cross, and that can be extraordinarily useful. So what if you say something that is wrong but is more powerful from a behavior perspective? Because, yeah, there's a bunch of different examples of how that might not be perfectly true, but it creates a hard line and, you know, to cross it or not cross it. And, and that is much better at guiding behavior than blurred lines. And so you see people that have risen to prominence in the health field say things that are truly controversial because, yeah, that's not perfectly accurate, but they grabs headlines and they've got a good following, and it's because you've got that clarity.

That's Dan Pardi, and this is episode 206 of Wellness Force Radio. What's up, my friend? It's your host, Josh Trent. And welcome back to another episode for your weekly access to global experts in all things wellness as we discover the the physical and emotional intelligence we need to live life well. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the podcast. Today is an epic show. We're learning about the sneaky state of food science for our three peat return guest Dan Pardee. Now, this is where we're going to talk to one of the leading minds in human optimization and the founder of Human os. Now, what's most fascinating about this upcoming conversation is Dan's ability to help people across the world truly read between the lines of nutrition studies so they can fall in love with the learning process, which is where all sustainable health and behavior changes really stem from. Anyways, now not only are we digging into how you can become the expert and the scientist of your own body, mind and soul through personalized health and wellness experimentation, but also by the end of the podcast, you're going to be well equipped to filter through all the information and studies and research out there to actually find the most trusted sources that'll help you become the best version of yourself. This podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, Organifi, creators of Organifi Green Juice. Huge shout out for our contest winner, by the way. We recently hit 200 shows for the podcast and our Wellness Force family member, Allie Boone, one of the wellness warriors, who's so active in our group over@wellnessforce.com group. She won 90 days of her Organifi. But no stress, you can win as well very soon. We'll be announcing a new contest winner in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned and keep leaving these reviews for the podcast. They help smart people like you discover the show and you can still get the deep discount by the way, 20% off your Organifi red, green and gold juice. Over@organifi.com wellnessforce all you have to do is just enter code wellnessforce and this is actually a huge savings if you think about how much zucchinis and tomatoes and chlorella and ashwagandha, all the costs of these things and let's face it like they're probably going to go bad in the back of the fridge, which has happened to me multiple times. This is why I'm stocking up for summer with the red juice. Just head to Organifi.com WellnessForce use code WellnessForce to get 20% off today. And today as you listen to the show, remind yourself to take massive deep breaths throughout the day. I'm reminding myself of this more and more. It's interesting the more research that comes out about box breathing which is part of what we're talking about the human OS system today. Dan has developed taking this deep breath. It's our only autonomic lever we can pull in the body to shift us from a state of tension or freneticness. Is freneticness a word? I think that's a word to relaxation and peace. So do this right now. Take a breath, break 5 second box breath, inhale for 5, hold for 5, exhale slowly for 5 and then hold at the bottom for 5. Do that as many times as you feel like you need. What you learned from Dan on the show today we're talking about the process of deciding which foods work well for your genotype. You're gonna learn about sourdough bread, whether or not the fermentation process actually helps us to digest this type of starch. The ketogenic diet versus ApoE who should really be following a high fat or keto diet. How you can become the architect own health through Dan's loop model as well as the Humanos platform. Why Dan still believes that fitness wearables are a big part of this that help him fulfill his daily goals. And as you listen to the podcast today, stay curious about how you think these examples can apply to your own life. Exactly where you are uniquely in your own wellness journey. Show notes from today are@wellnessforce.com 206 Dan gave us a huge hookup. Really stoked for this. He gave us a dollar access for an entire month of the Humanos platform, including the box breath counter, the nutritional videos, yoga, peer reviewed research and everything else that he spent decades formulating and collecting. Just use code WellnessForce over at Humanos Me for your $1 monthly trial. Be sure to give him a big shout on social for human OS and the entire team as well. Now I want to read this quick quote before we learn from Dan because we talked about this. No matter how much info you have, it's about the doing. If you can collect things, if you can have books on your shelf, things that you've learned on podcasts, that's great. But it's in the doing that we really achieve this next level. Dan has a great quote for this. As we learn and as we grow, he says, be really gentle with yourself. Follow the ebb and flow and the reality of your life, but seek to have fun with it. Enjoying what you do is the most important thing to a successful health practice over the length of a lifespan replication crisis in science. There is a fascinating topic that we're diving into today and it's with our three Pete guests, Dan Pardee. Dan, welcome back to Wellness Force Radio, my friend.

Woo hoo. Good to be back. I always love joining you on your show. Josh, thank you for having me on again.

And people don't know this, but right now you are talking to me in a room filled with skulls. Tell people this fun fact about yourself, man.

Yeah, I do like skulls. I used to teach medical gross anatomy at Florida State and that was a very humbling experience. You get to work with bodies and dissect them down to, you know, the core, literally. And you learn so much. And it's such a for somebody to donate their body to science that way so that others can learn so that we can take care of bodies while they're alive. That's such a great gift and it was so interesting. So I was a student in the, in the class and then I was, I taught it the next year. And to see people's reactions over time too. And it's very difficult for some people when they're, they first open the cadaver and to think that I have to cut into this is not comfortable for folks. And by the end people become a lot more comfortable with it. But also I think one of the more humbling experiences was when somebody, my instructor, took a human brain and put the brain in my hands and said every thought that this person ever had, every feeling that they've ever had, every emotion, every sense happened here and you're holding that person's life's work in your hand right now. And I was just blown away.

Wow.

Blown away.

Well, I knew there was gonna be a deep answer cause I Asked you kind of an interesting question. Why is your room filled with skulls? But people know you, man. This is your third time on the show and you know, you're this entrepreneur, you're a researcher. You've also become a really trusted friend for me and for the audience here because we've done two shows and they were at this intersection of what is actually out there as far as research and academia. And we talked about cherry picking studies before, but today this sneaky science around food, you know, so many companies out there have their own agendas. Dan, you just recently had a podcast for Human OS Radio and it was with Stefan Guillennet and it was around the ketogenic diet. We're going to talk about that and kind of weave that into the conversation today, as well as state change, taking loving ownership of our state change and how that plugs in to this long term healthy lifestyle. But if people don't know about the loop model, let's just do a quick refresher before we dig in about the loop model.

Absolutely. So this is a behavior model that I developed about a decade ago. It's the basis of Human os, which is the health tech platform that I developed. And it says so in order for somebody to adopt and sustain health behaviors long term, they should understand why they're doing something, how to do it, if they're doing it, and if it's working. And you can see those are really four discrete buckets. And so you do need to understand health science. We can't totally outsource that because you're going to be the one that's going to be making decisions in your life. Nobody's going to make more decisions than you will. And so having some knowledge about all these things that can affect your health, they're opportunities. And I think of them as like learning skills. If you learn it right, then you can exploit that information for your own benefit for the rest of your life. You might not, but you can. You've empowered yourself to do that. So do you have to have PhD level knowledge? No, but what we try to do is to have people be able to become fluent, which means that they can have a conversation with their friend about things like fasting, with things like, you know, exercise level, all sorts of stuff that does matter. And the clearer that is for you, the more likely you're going to benefit. And then it's great to really have knowledge, but knowledge by itself does not vaccinate you from a healthy lifestyle. So you have to be able to translate into that, into skills and sometimes that skill development is hard and sometimes it's easy, but just actually trying it for the first time just breaks the seal so that now you can actually do it. Where it was theoretical before and now it's internal. You know what it feels like, you know what it's like. And this could be cooking. Like, gosh, I looked at these recipes for a long time, but I'm not really a chef. I don't cook. And then you just make one and you're like, okay, I got it. That makes a lot more sense to me now. So a couple of different examples. One example that I like to sort of highlight this difference is you might totally know what riding a bike looks like. And you're like, I got it. That guy's riding a bike. I know what it is. But then until you do it yourself, you're like, okay, that's what it feels like. And now I can do it myself. So that's sort of a nice example. And then once we learn things, how do we mean, what is it going to make it that that becomes a part of our pattern long term. Right. That this is not just something that we've learned, once tried for 30 days, and now it's a thing of the past, that it's actually something that is. Becomes a part of the character of our daily pattern, our daily to weekly pattern. And then is it all working? Right? So can you get some deeper insight into your performance? And we have ideas you might become totally intoxicated with a new idea in health. And, you know, actually one thing I'd like to do today is talk a little bit about this idea of, like, fads. And there's so many different, you know, bad fads out there. Absolutely. I have some. I have some perspective on this. I actually don't think it's all that. I think it's just. It's sort of a throwaway term. Right. There are new ideas that emerge into the marketplace before sciences have a chance to validate them. And a lot of those will be promising, and a lot of those will never be validated. And so how do you then pick and choose between what's right and what's not? Because sometimes these ideas can be discordant with what common advice is to be healthy. And so you can definitely try a lot of things that may not work, but you ultimately have to have a really tight relationship with yourself and hopefully objective ways to measure, to say, this is actually working for me. Because you can also have the scenario where somebody falls in love with an idea, they do it and it actually does it. It's not working really well for them.

Yes, we're going to talk about that today because, you know, in the past three years, I've done a lot of sedentary work and integration of, like, movement snacks, which you talked about, and just changing my state all throughout the day. It hasn't made the impact that I've wanted it to make. And when I think about something you said, you know, early on, three plus years ago, when we first met, you said, knowing without doing is the same thing as not knowing. What matters most is that the knowledge you have will give you an effective health practice for the long term. And I'll tell you, man, behind me there's a huge, you know, array of books, and I've been to conferences, and I'm one of the people in the health and wellness world where I have a decade plus of, like, doing the work, trying the sweater on, see if it itches. But yet in my own life, in the past three years, I've noticed that with this higher fat intake and with this more paleolithic framework for my dietary style, I've actually noticed that my biomechanics aren't really the way I want them. My biometrics, the way that my body is, my body composition. So I'm in this iteration phase. And we'll weave this into the conversation as well, because there's a lot of genetic testing out there. We know about the different apolipoproteins, the 3, 4 split with people that can process saturated fat at different levels. So let's dig into this, man. Let's take one topic at a time, because you and I could probably talk about 50 things.

Oh, yeah.

The first thing I want to talk about, though, is this ketogenic framework. You and Stephane Guillenay talked about this on your podcast. Give people a brief summary of this topic, and then I want to ask you about the scientific literature and how it's always not so trustable.

Yeah. So Stefan is a longtime collaborator. He is a really excellent resource to human health. His writing is extraordinarily precise. He's a great communicator, both in writing and in spoken word, about really understanding what studies say. And oftentimes he's sort of flying. He's pushing back against some trends that have become popular, that have big movements. And he's saying that's not really an accurate review of the literature. And so he's developed some haters because of that, too. But I think he's a unique guy. And in this particular show he's been on multiple shows. We discussed this new study that came out that was sponsored by Virta Health. Virta Health is a really exciting company. They just raised, I think, $45 million for their series B. And it was started by a man, Sammy Ikonen. Sammy founded the company Trulia, which does real estate. If you want to find what homes are for sale and how much a home last sold for, you can go to there. And it's a great real estate resource. Anyway, he's also a pretty serious athlete, and he and his wife rode from, I think, the Bay Area or la, one of the two, I can't remember, over to Hawaii. And it was a unassisted and it seemed like a really incredible journey. And they did it all on a ketogenic diet. And that seems to be actually like a perfect type of exercise modality in order to have the ketogenic diet benefit you because it's long and slow. But anyway, he's become enamored with the ketogenic diet, like many have, and he started this company where they're creating a diabetes program that has counseling that's mostly based off a ketogenic diet that does some tracking, and they're looking to try to reverse people that have diabetes or pre diabetes. Now, they've claimed reversal. And what Stefan and I discussed in the show is that while there were so many different impressive things about the study, the spontaneous amount of weight loss that people experienced, like, they weren't told to eat less calories, and they lost about 30 pounds on average. And if you compare that to other clinical trials that are designed for weight loss, you can see that averages are somewhere usually between maybe like four to eight pounds in a year. And this was 30 pounds. And so the ketogenic diet is extraordinarily impressive for weight loss. But they also were claiming diabetes reversal. And the reason why is because they showed that HBA1C, which is a way to monitor your average blood glucose level over longer periods of time instead of samples of where it is now. So if it's fasting or after a meal, that can be all over the place. And that doesn't mean it's unhealthy or healthy. Right? So this is. It has its error issues, but if you look at. It's a good marker to look at for general level of blood glucose anyway, that reduced significantly and in a meaningful way. But the point that Stefan was really clear to make is that when you say that you've reversed diabetes, you actually then can demonstrate that people can tolerate carbohydrates again, you give them oral glucose tolerance tests and you see if they're able to clear the blood glucose as they were, so they're not in the diabetic range. And so that is very different than saying that you're able to kind of handle blood glucose better or that you have lower HbA1c. And the reason why is because the message that you give people if you say we've reversed diabetes is that indeed you can go out and tolerate carbohydrates again, whether you want to or not. Whether you want to stay on a ketogenic diet or you want to go into a low carb diet, that's another question. But making that claim is, I think we thought was not great of them, honestly.

How so? Why was that not a smart move on?

Well, because they didn't actually demonstrate that they reverse diabetes. They showed that they improved their symptoms. It's basically the equivalent of saying that insulin cures diabetes because it helps to manage the symptoms. It doesn't. In fact, there is some cases if you give insulin early to a diabetic that that alone might let the pancreatic beta cells rest and that can recover them. But generally speaking, if you've had diabetes for a long time and you start taking insulin, it helps to manage the symptoms. It doesn't cure the disease. And they very well might have cured the disease with a ketogenic diet. And there's actually some really cool evidence that would suggest that might actually be the truth. And we can get into that in a moment. But they just didn't test it and so they shouldn't say that. The ethical thing to do would be to say these all the wonderful results. This is what we've tested, this is where we are. We're showing really excellent symptom. Next study that we're going to do is do a similar study like this and then we're going to actually do an oral glucose tolerance test afterwards to see have we turned on those beta cells again, have we? Because the blood glucose levels is a measurement of the disease, but it's not the disease itself. There's other aspects of having beta cell dysfunction that are important too. So anyway, interesting commentary. Overall, it's very positive. Overall, it's very, very exciting. We see a massive trend now with everybody coming out with their ketogenic diet book and I think there's some confusion around it.

Yeah, I think so too. Let's clear up some of this confusion too, man, because a lot of people that do these long term studies, whether they're six months or six years. Dan, the money coming in that funds these studies has a direct impact on the outcome of the study. I mean, let's be honest, right? This is what you and Steven talked about. It's like replication crisis. The science is not as accurate now because we actually have only had certain ways to measure them. And also, let's be honest, in order to fund a study takes money. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But how do we do this when we look for information? And let's contrast this with the ketogenic diet, maybe go plus and minus on this study that was talked about.

So with science is a, it's sort of a long and grueling process. We you have a lot of people that aren't scientists that are very interested in science that misunderstand how the process works. So it's like I remember people were asking Rob Wolf one time, why don't people just do the definitive study? Like if you could have hundreds of thousands of people and feeding them X many times a day with a certain meal. Yeah. I mean, there definitely are resource limitations to work. Oftentimes work will start by doing something like a pilot where you're looking to see if there is an effect at all before you do something deeper. Invest more resources, time, and get more people involved. Because that's the other thing that you need to consider too. Is there enough of a signal to justify doing something that is experimental and interventional in humans? Right. You might think it's the greatest idea ever, but what if there are? When you don't know a lot about it, you also don't know a lot about the risks. And so science is a slow, arduous process. And the way to really assess science is not by any one study. There are going to be more hallmark studies. If you have a double blind randomized control trial that lasts for two years, that's amazing. But the reality is that different studies all have limitations and they all provide something of value. And you need to look at the entire ecosystem of the body of literature in that field. You need to look at, first of all, the epidemiological literature. People criticize epidemiology all the time because it's imprecise. It's things like food recall diaries that aren't very accurate, et cetera. But at the same time, it can ask questions that other types of studies can't. Like what happens when you have populations that have been on this diet their whole life? What is their risk of disease compared to other populations that eat differently this is how we identify, identified that smoking was an issue. Doctors used to recommend smoke these cigarettes over the others. And then we saw, wow, there's actually real population risks when you compare these populations. And that made us then say, okay, let's actually do interventional work. We're going to set up a study, have people that are taking one pill versus a control that's doing as many things similar to them except for taking that pill. So you have the controls are balanced. And then you also have animal work, right? And animal work people criticize all the time. How much does that animal model translate into application for humans, or at least direct understanding?

I've always been curious about that.

It's hard. There are definitely different animal models that are right for certain things. In fact, animal models have more overlap than people give them credit for. If you look at so many changes that take place when you induce obesity in an animal are the exact same changes that take place in humans. And if you do bariatric surgery on those mice, they have the same exact response that humans do. They have the same hormones, right? They're binding to the same receptors in the brain, even though their brains look a little bit different. So there are meaningful differences. But there's a reason why translational science happens, right? There's a reason why it happens all over the world.

I got to ask you this question because as I talked about before, like my personal journey, we share so much in the show about, like, what is our own intelligence level. And I feel like. And sometimes the danger is that as someone gathers more information and they take on books and PDFs and resources, it can almost blunt someone's intelligence, their intuitional intelligence around what is truly right for them. You know, the best choices that they innately kind of came into this world with versus all the scientific literature and academia that tells them, hey, you should just be eating butter and bacon and coffee. You know, it's like, that doesn't always work. And it brings up something for me here on this APOE3.4 and it's a link that we'll put in the show notes, and it's actually the one that you commented on in our Facebook group. And it was around this high fat diet in mice, since we're talking about this animal contrast. And it was by giving these mice that had the APOE3.4 genotype, this is typically what has more trouble processing saturated fats. And it was shown in this study here that this is what atrophied their brain function. It's what made them gain excessive body Weight. What do you feel when we look at the ketogenic diet versus these APOES?

Yeah, so the APO's are lipid transporters and there's two APO2, APO3 and APO4. And APO4 doesn't seem to process saturated fat as well. Process is sort of a loose term here, but it does seem to associate the risk for cardiovascular disease on a high, high saturated fat diet is stronger in people with APOE4, so is Alzheimer's disease. And they tend. These type of people tend to put on muscle pretty well and their thinking is that they might do better actually with more cardiovascular training versus weight training, because weight training can actually cause cholesterol levels to rise in these folks. And yeah, there's a couple different topics that are being discussed here, but it comes down to is people that actually have this genotype, should they be modifying the amount of saturated fat that they eat? And I think the answer is pretty clearly yes. And should they also be modifying the type of exercise that they do? I think that there's a really wide berth of how the type of exercise one can do that feels right for them and over the lifetime. Right. I mean, do any of us just do the same thing over and over again? I mean, probably there are some, but.

But you're not doing what you did when you were 20. If you're 40. It just doesn't work the same way.

Yeah, then you get bored. Right. I'm in a yoga phase right now and I'm doing hot yoga three times a week and I love it. And I do a lot of walking.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah. And that's what my body needs. And I think other people are like this too. Right. You get into spinning class. Now you're doing animal moves and you're doing yoga and maybe do a little bit of that the time. But then one period, you're just dedicated more to that your body just, you know, your mind just wants. That's where you're really drawn to it. So point being is that I don't know if you might want to avoid super high intense training if you're at the E4 and just do. Just be a cross trainer. And then other than that, unless you're one of these people that's really trying to push the boundaries of what the human body can do and be like a real performer, you might need to modify your goals there. So that's one thought. And then the other thought was, is saturated fat bad? Can I just eat a ton of coconut oil? And this is Controversial. A lot of the controversy has been around whether or not saturated fat actually elevates cholesterol level and whether or not that even matters. And I believe the answer is yes, that it does matter. I mean, you see a higher and higher risk for heart disease and myocardial infarction and primary and secondary heart disease. So people that have had a heart attack or have had other heart issues and cardiovascular issues after they've had a heart attack and switching out from a higher saturated fat to higher olive oil, so extra virgin olive oil, you see really good benefits there. Now, are there conditions where, let's say you have a very high nutrient diet, that you're eating high saturated fat, but the rest of your diet doesn't look like crap? There's been some studies out of the Nordic region that shown that actually. Indeed, that's actually very healthy. There are unanswered questions still, but I think being mindful of the saturated fat that you have in your diet is still a good idea. And, you know, does that mean you can't eat them? No, you can, but I try to get a lot of the best evidence that I've seen for a good added saturated. A good added fat, excuse me, is extra virgin olive oil.

I'm so glad we're talking about this, Dan, because, you know, Aubrey Marcus was on the podcast, and he was like, yeah, you know, I just know that butter and healthy fats and more of a ketogenic diet is just a great thing for me. And I looked at a photo of him when he was 18. I'm like, this guy's always been kind of ripped, right? So he's always had maybe a genotype expression that made his assimilation of saturated fats more effective than somebody like a 3, 3 or 3, 4. I am in the 20 percentile, which is, you know, 3, 4. So I have one allele for 3 and one allele for 4. And I asked Perlmutter the same thing, and he's like, listen, people that have this allele. The research is unclear. And I've asked other people about this too, and it's like, maybe for the clarity around this 3, 4, we sequence it from 23andMe, then we put it through promethease and we see, okay, is this actually in my genotype? That's the first step. And then from there, where do we go? What do we do after that?

Yeah, you're heterozygous versus homozygous, and the risk for homozygous. So you have two copies of the APOE from both One from each parent. The risk is clearer there. It's less clear with the heterozygous. So Apoe 3, Apoe 4, that means you have a copy of each of those from each parent. So you might have slightly elevated risk. Now the question is, with all this new technology, we're able to get a lot more information about ourselves. And is that information. I think that you see that we've talked about this before. There's so much hope that's placed into these tests. Like, if I can just figure out my microbiome and I know my genomics, then I'll have everything I need. But what is it going to come down to? It's going to come down to a recommendation that might be slightly different sometimes, occasionally very different if you have really a rare condition. But most people, the irony is it comes back to sort of common sets of principles. Nutrient rich, high fiber, usually low in red meat, but doesn't mean you have to have no red meat. Balancing it with fish intake. And it looks a lot like the Mediterranean diet. And then I think people will sort of determine if they want to do like a Mediterranean Paleo version or full Mediterranean. And how do they predict process, like unprocessed grains or legumes? So I eat a lot of lentils and beans and I do great with them, but the more that I eat them, the better that I handle them. So if I haven't eaten them for a little while, then microbiome changes and I don't handle them as well. But then within a week or two, I handle them better. And so if you do like a challenge or where you remove something from your diet and then you add it back and then if you have any symptom at all, then that's supposed to be just justification for you to not have that food in your diet. Now, if you have really serious symptoms and you remove it and you do better, great. That's an awesome. You've actually fixed your migraines or you had acne that was really bad or just bad bloating. There are legit reasons to do it. But you have to also be mindful that if you add beans back after not having them in your diet for a little while and you have a little bit of gas, that that can actually improve if you keep eating diet beans and then you develop more of the bacteria that help process them.

What do you think about sourdough, though? Because you've mentioned legumes and beans and obviously we have to try this and see through an implementation how long this Actually makes us feel better. What do you think about the fermentation process of sourdough where it actually breaks down that harmful parts of the protein that actually irritates people from gluten?

Yeah, totally. So a very good friend of mine is one of the best bread makers in the world. It's my wife, Samara's best friend, Arielle's husband. So Ariel makes some of the recipes in the Mediterranean diet. I call her the LeBron James of cooking. She just has, like, the most natural talent. Everything she makes is the best tasting thing I've ever had. She's incredible. And her husband, Nick Giusteau, has Justeau Mill. He travels around the world. He was in the Bread Olympics. I didn't know that there was such a thing, but he was.

They were not invited to Paleo fx.

They were not invited. They should have been, though, because he makes bread. He uses traditional grains, like ancient grains, and he does this double leavening process, which it ferments them and you can eat. So it's so interesting. Eating his bread, which is made in a traditional way, is so much different than eating bread that you get off the shelf, you can eat a piece of his bread and it, first of all, no issues with it. In terms of when I do eat enough gluten, I start to get achy in my joints. So I'll notice that repeatedly. I've tried so many different times, and that's indication that some of those proteins are probably making it through my gut and causing some inflammation. I'm feeling it in my body. That has happened so many times that I'm 100% certain that there's an effect there. When I eat his bread, I don't get that effect. And it's because he's reducing a lot of that gluten. And maybe it's coming from the fact that he's using different grain sources, but he makes it in a way that takes a lot of labor. It tastes amazing. But just a lot of the way that bread is made doesn't involve that much labor. It used to and now it doesn't. So many things in life are that way. So are there good versions of bread? That is, I think, a good question for us to start asking is that is there a good version of a juice or a smoothie or bread versus thinking about these things as just one monolithic entity when really there's a huge diversity.

Do you feel like reductionism in the health industry is actually more deleterious than it is effective? When people just go, it's Black or white?

That's a really interesting question because black and white creates certainty and borders. There are bright lines for us to cross and not cross. And that can be extraordinarily useful. So what if you say something that is wrong but is more powerful from a behavior perspective? Because, yeah, there's a bunch of different examples of how that might not be perfectly true, but it creates a hard line and, you know, to cross it or not cross it. And that is much better at guiding behavior than blurred lines. And so you see people that have risen to prominence in the health field say things that are truly controversial because, yeah, that's not perfectly accurate.

And it grabs headlines.

It grabs headlines and they've got a good following. And it's because you've got that clarity. And so, you know, I don't know if it's necessarily, if I can really answer that question, then, yeah, it's always, it kind of depends on who you're talking to. Because some people will just want that clarity, but other people, people are going to want to go a little bit further and they're going to not trust you if, you know, you put out that piece. Let's say somebody puts out a piece of information that's not exactly true. Well, then they might not listen to anything else that you have to say because they know that that was sort of a half truth. So I think it comes down to, is there like this one perfect approach? No. Individuals need to find their, like, who's in your tribe, who's going to, who's your elder, who's your mentor, who's the person that's going to be assessing this information, communicating in a way that really speaks to you. And I, you know, personally, I like to communicate information to the degree that I like, you know, that I think is useful. But I'm not everybody's cup of tea. Some people are going to want more, some people are going to want less. And I think that that's a good way to think who am I, who, you know, who's speaking to me now? And then I would also say just look into that person's background. I mean, is this person. There are people that have no degrees to their name at all, but they're incredibly curious and thoughtful and analytical and they're open. I would say the one thing that I would really look for in anybody that you follow for health guidance is is this person open to modifying their opinion when new information comes in or are they extraordinarily stubborn? And there's a saying from actually, I don't think that Mark Andreessen from Andreessen Capital was the first person to. Andreessen Horowitz, the vc, is the first person to say this, but I heard it from him. Have, let's say, strong opinions held loosely. So what does that mean? That means that you've taken the time to actually clarify an opinion about something, but you hold that loosely, you're not going to defend it even in the presence of new data. That should change your mind on it. And you see people like that, they write an article and somebody writes back and shows the different errors. And I actually don't. It's not that I don't like debate. I want to see debate because that's how we get to the. That's how we get to the borders of what really matters and what's important. But then you have to be able to say, okay, I see your point, I understand that. And you know, maybe I was wrong. And it's very hard for some people to say that they're wrong. So look for people that just demonstrate an openness to providing the best information that they can to you today, but being willing to modify that in the face of new data that comes out, because there's tons of data that's coming out every single day, more than you can keep up with. As we were talking about earlier, not every single paper is going to is an answer or it could be flawed. And I'd like to say one more thing about the, you know, the replication crisis. The replication crisis means that, you know, studies should actually be replicated with a different lab, right? So somebody says, I can follow your protocol. That's why we have such a detailed methods section. Somebody should be able to pick up that paper, follow that protocol, do exactly the same study, and get a very similar result. And oftentimes the real crisis is that we're not seeing enough replication. And that has to do with incentives, incentives by the journals. Journals want to publish positive stuff because that's good for their. The negative findings is less interesting to everybody, even though it can be very helpful too. So the journal has incentives to publish stuff that people want to read and also publish stuff that is new versus this study's been done before. And so you always have to go back to incentives. And it's not that people are unethical, it's not that scientists want to cheat. Unfortunately, there's sort of some science bashing happening in the public health sphere right now. And it largely, in my mind, represents a misunderstanding of how science works. Yes, there are certainly issues you do see more favorable outcomes in papers that are sponsored by industry. But at the same time I worked in the pharmaceutical industry. There was zero ethical issues that I could detect when I was there. I ran scientific publications for Jazz Pharmaceuticals, which didn't mean I did write my own publications for them. But I also worked with scientific writers and people that were considered thought leaders that were working with the company. And also you'll look to see like, oh, this person's working with the company, therefore they are tainted and we shouldn't listen to anything and say they're clearly tainted.

Right. That's an easy thing to do.

Yes. Let me ask people who feel that way. Let me ask you this question. Don't you want experts involved in the generation of new compounds that could help patients? Don't you want people that have tons of patient experience that understand the ins and outs of seeing an individual of all different types come into their clinic? Don't you want to have them have a voice in the process from the very beginning so that they can guide the clinical development program in a manner that's going to lead us to the best understanding of whether or not this drug can help?

I think people, yes, the answer is obviously yes. But I think people have had their trust broken so many times by people getting found out. I mean, look at the whole crisis around Time magazine publishing. Oh yeah, butter is actually good for you because those old studies from Ancel Keys. Yeah, he actually lied. So, you know, people see this happening and they're like, okay, how do I get to the truth? And you and guinea talked about this pre registration in advance for these studies so that they're not just selecting their own key group of people. So there's social and thought contagion pre registering stud. When we look at these large studies, how important is that?

Yeah, so there's a. The term poor quality is misunderstood and you see it all the time when people talk about science, people that are in the sort of health coaching sphere, that quality makes you think that it was done poorly. It really should be confidence. Right? So a pilot study that had enrolled 10 people that didn't have a control group that is considered a poor quality study. It might have been executed perfectly. What it means is that your confidence is you have less confidence that that can be replicated because it didn't have all of the controls. There wasn't a crossover period. It wasn't placebo controlled. So we tend to think poor quality as, oh, you know, they did a horrible job conducting it. No, it's. What is your confidence Based off of the study design that you can replicate that. That is a huge. That's a big difference, right? So when you hear terrible quality, poor quality, study people are not demonstrating that they really understand that this is how science works, right? You take these little steps, you have to read the entire ecosystem of what's in that sphere, from epidemiology to controlled trials to even animal work. Because the animal work point that I didn't make earlier is that, yes, how much does it translate? But it can answer or at least address questions that you can't. You can't cut open a person's mind and look to see if there's any inflammation within the hypothalamus. Even with imaging techniques, you just don't have the same degree of precision that you do when you can feed an animal something and look to see are there, you know, is the fat thermostatic neurons in the arcu nucleus, are they inflamed? And so overall you have to look at all of it and then say, when you look at all of this, does it point us in a direction? And then what you'll notice is that not one single clinical trial is designed to optimize that methodology for an individual. And that's the art and science of health, right? The art is then saying, okay, I'm going to do something that's not like exactly to the letter, evidence based because it wasn't designed for optimizing. I have to then work with an individual and I have to have this sort of circular relationship with the individual and the health coaching team to then try to figure out what's ideal for that person. And that is a iterative recursive process that changes over the lifespan, that should be modified when new ideas come out that gain popularity. We have different insights. We're experiencing that now with keto, right. It's very different from what's been in existence before. And it's extraordinarily promising. And the old guard is not there uncomfortably denying that it's something that really needs consideration.

This is why I love having you on the show, man, because you always give us this insight from a scientific. But also I consider you be a very spiritual person, someone who's open to new things, someone who knows that we're here in a rock in the middle of outer space and we don't exactly know why. And we're all figuring that out along the way, right? And so this, this academia that you've had for so many decades, it's really what drove you to found human os and so with human os, this is the message of clarity. We've already explored for the past 30 minutes, you know, so many different studies and ways to analyze health and everything else that is involved in and having a life of wellness. So with human os, this is something that a year ago, I remember, we touched base and it wasn't launched yet, and so you've now launched it. How does Humanos cut through some of the BS out there to give people the real nuggets they can use on a practical, everyday basis?

You know, I gotta tell you that I've been working on this for a while, and I am just as passionate and excited about working on it today and tomorrow that I was when I first started. And it's years later. And so from a very selfish perspective. Perspective, I am so happy I get to do what I do because it's endlessly stimulating. Health is so hard. And what I'd like to say is human OS is really a mission above any current function, because three years from now, there are going to undoubtedly be elements to the system that are still there, and there are going to be undoubtedly things that change and modify and expand. But the mission is to make people expert. Expert at navigating their own health practice. Now, expertise is sort of a stretch goal. I mean, what is the border of saying that you're an expert? I mean, when you have. Can you just. Can, you know, everything. No, but it's that stretch goal, right? It's that moonshot that we should all be aiming for with our health, which is to really understand things. So instead of just becoming familiar with them, that you become really fluent. You can have a conversation, you've tried it, you've had personal experience, you've maybe tried it again if it didn't work out the first time, but you made some modifications to tinker with it. And I think that part of the mindset of being this somebody seeking expertise is one that recognizes that this isn't something that I just learn in a week or a month. It's an ongoing process. It's an ongoing process. And part of the right mindset is somebody who thinks of themselves as a regular learner, taking in new information, thinking about it, drawing diagrams, communicating it. Right? It's sharing it, sharing it with their.

Friends, doing what you and I are doing right now, it's like, that's the whole point of discovering. That's why on the show, we. We are in the process of discovering, Dan, this physical and emotional intelligence. And so no one's ever, in my mind, a complete Master. Like even if you look at the Zen masters in martial arts, right, they're still considering themselves in their core to be a student. Do you still feel like with all you know and everything that you've done with human os, that you still operate from that mindset of a student?

100%. I mean, there, the, there's that great saying that when you graduate from college, you think you know everything. When you graduate with your master's, you realize that you know nothing. And when you graduate with your PhD, you realize that nobody else knows anything either. So for every one bit of information that you learn, it opens up 10 more questions. And that can be daunting. And yet I just try to smile into that and. Because it doesn't mean that I'm not making any advancement and it doesn't mean that I'm not learning things that can actually affect how I live. That's not true. But then there is too much information to take in. There is too much to try to understand it all. So you have to have fun with it, enjoy it. And then can you learn, can you dedicate a period of time to say, I'm going to really learn the Paleo diet. I'm going to try it, I'm going to learn about it, I'm going to read about it, I'm going to talk about it. And you try that for a little bit and then do the same for the Mediterranean diet and see how you feel with that. And maybe you come up with some sort of blended you version of the two of them. Right. And I'm just using those two as examples.

Sure, sure.

What about, you know, you have to be the one that is creating your, you know, your movement practice in your day. Maybe it has a, you know, it's just CrossFit or it has a smidge of CrossFit in it, but you're doing your yoga and you're doing balancing work and you're doing, and you love dancing and, and that is a little bit different than it was three years ago. Talked about that earlier too. Right. But you're the, you're at the driver's seat and you need to learn how to drive. So we're, we're trying to make you a Formula one race car driver in your body. You can't think that all of these tools, whether it's technology, whether it's other people's minds, they can give us guidance that help us learn, but you're the one that's going to be making the decisions, that's going to be eating the food that's going to be going to the classes or just working out or going to bed on time, you're the one that's doing all of it. And you have an extraordinarily important role in doing it, right? But you don't have to do it alone, right? There's community, there's technology. And so with Humanos, we're trying to make it so that you can come and you can learn things in a really good way. We have basically our courses that are peer reviewed. They're divided into little lessons. So if you have a minute here and there, you can just keep going through it. We quiz you at the end of a lesson so it helps you think about what was that key learning thing. And that's been proven where if you do that, you're much more likely to actually retain that information. And then things to simplify today, Here are some recipes, here's some workouts that you can do. And then tracking what's my level, right? So if you. A feedback loop gives you. Has a goal, right? It has. Then you do an action, you then see how that modifies some sort of objective feedback towards your goal. And so you have this total loop of knowing what you want to do, knowing how to affect it, and then having ideas on how to affect it and knowing where you stand. And so those little feedback loops that we create with sleep and exercise, they're so powerful, right? And they're simple, right? It doesn't have to be a silver bullet. It can be, I call them mundane but meaningful. I've mentioned that term on your show before, right? That it's nothing that is like, I'm wearing this hat and it's sending electric shocks into my brain. And, you know, I mean, there's cool stuff coming, no doubt. It's simple stuff about, you know, getting the right light exposure by getting the right physical activity, by having that physical activity spread throughout the day. Like there's just a lot of stuff is kind of boring in that and you know, to do it. But are you doing it right? Are you doing that?

That is the big take home, Dan. All this knowledge, all these modules. But are you actually doing the damn thing? And I think it's not from a place of shame or pressure or that we have to. It's taking a deep breath and seeing our life from 30,000ft in the air and saying, wow, I'm so lucky to be here. And I get to. I get to practice these behaviors. I get to have a community. I get to be a part of something. Bigger than me. And so with this human os, it's funny. Operating system, Human operating system. It's like we know that there are common threads between eating, moving, sleeping. But honestly, Dan, the way that we think, feel, and act. How does human os, this operating system, really this framework for being healthy in this modern world, how does it help people in their thoughts, feelings, and actions?

Yeah. So I'm going to take a slightly tangential path to answering this question because there's been a juxtaposition where if you're using technology, you're not in your body, right. You're sort of giving over to your technological overlord. And that can happen. It can happen where you're paying more attention to your HRV value than to how you really feel. You're just trying to listen to what the tech is telling you to do versus thinking internally, if it feels right. I think the ideal is when you can use both. Right. The technology in itself is actually helping you have a deeper relationship with your body. And I'll give you an analogy. Some people say, oh, you know, if you take a camera on vacation, then you're sort of. You're not experiencing your vacation because you're like, always behind the lens. For me, though, it's the opposite. If I have my camera with me, I feel like I'm paying attention to so many more things. I'm paying attention to the curvatures in that rock and the moss that's growing on this tree. And. Right. I'm noticing more because I'm engaging with it in a different way. And so in that case, the technology is not taking me out of my body and out of my vacation, out of the experience, but it's helping me go deeper. And I think with technology, that can do the same thing too. But it shouldn't replace you asking yourself, how do I feel? So let's say a lot of this thinking and methodology does go into building a human os. Like people say, why don't you create programs? Because I don't want to tell you what to do every day. I want to give you some options. And I want you to. To be the choice, the chooser in this. We're the choice architect. We're going to give you a bunch of good choices, but you have to become in tune with yourself and make those right decisions for how you feel today versus me. Just saying, just follow these rules for 30 days. Because yes, people can do that and make progress. And actually just getting exposure to doing things for 30 months in a very clear way can be beneficial. But ultimately we do all need to get to this place where we're in the driver's seat. We've got tools that support us and we're sort of having this cool relationship between I'm trying new things and I'm always evolving and learning, and yet I'm not letting my core fundamental things fall to the wayside. I'm sticking with those. My pattern is always getting better and that should show up in your world. Like you feeling really good every day for the most part.

I want to insert awareness too. From our last conversation a year ago, you said your job, our job as creators for health programs, it's not to motivate the public, it's to create conditions and frameworks for them so they can continually motivate themselves. And I think that for me is a massive takeaway for what's different about your program. Like, what's different about the human OS approach is that you're not selling a book where as long as you just do the guides and the PDFs and the templates in the book, you'll be okay. Because essentially you're taking out that self empowerment for people if they just follow your thing. What you're doing, Dan, and why I love having you on the show, man, is this conversation is about what is the evolving process of learning, of understanding that I'm not just gonna enjoy this process, I'm gonna fall in love with the learning. How do you make people fall in love with the learning and how does that plug into this positive feedback loop?

You know, it takes mental reframing and we're doing that right here. So, for example, looking at the ketogenic diet. So this has come up a couple times in the show. Instead of viewing it as, is this the right diet? View it as, I'm going to give it a try. How do I do with it? What did I learn? What did I learn about my body? Trying it and doing it. How about the Mediterranean diet? Not that. Is this the best diet ever? There's good evidence, I would say, that it's really impossible to say what diet is best, but it's certainly not impossible for you to say what diet's best for you, because you can try it. And if you feel really good and sustainable and you like eating the food and you're getting the results that you'd like, then that's great. That's. That, I think is sort of a breath of fresh air versus thinking like, cool. Here's some stuff that people are trying. Fasting. Let me get some experience with it. And if it doesn't, maybe it's not for me, or maybe I'm gonna. I'll try it again in six months when I, you know, and I'll try. I'll try these three things differently when I do it. So, you know, you get to experiment a lot in your life, and that's cool. And I like to really focus within the day. So am I showing up in a manner where I can articulate thoughts, where I can be creative, where I can get work done? I can task switch really quickly? And so it's funny, a lot of the stuff that I do is really focusing on mental performance too, because it's a way to then shift the discussion around health, which is a bit nebulous, into something that's very specific and timely. It's like, how am I going to perform today? And that then can guide and motivate you to do these things that otherwise are easy to delay. Right, Delay. I'll do it later because I'm not going to get peripheral arterial disease for another 45 years. But that's so easy to continue to do. And you want to be as like, how can I make today as awesome as possible? And who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want to feel their best perform, get things done, perform really well and whatever that is. I mean, at the things you care to do well, but also at the relationships you care to, you know, have it be as enriching in your life too, man.

What I'm hearing from you is this mental reframing, Dan. This is what you've plugged into the program. This is what you're talking about right now. It can be kind of like a breath shortening thing. When people dive into research and they get scared. Like, even when I first learned about these alleles and I had this higher risk for dementia and for Alzheimer's and desaturated fat, it kind of stressed me out in the beginning, but then I realized, oh, all I have to do is talk to people that I respect that can give me the learning, the reframing to actually enjoy this process of discovering. And I think a lot of people don't see this reframe. How are you doing your part? Like, what's your contribution to reframe the discussion around the learning and the discovering versus the myopic and the reductionism, you.

Know, is just to keep talking about it and let, you know, sharing the ideas about, you know, you have a really important role in this. And I'll use the Fitbit example. I think we might have even talked about it before, but very common. You'll hear people say, you know, I tried it. I saw that I walked X amount of steps for a certain amount of time. And then I sort of knew what 10,000 steps feel like. So I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna wear it. I still wear mine seven years later. And it's as powerful at affecting my behavior as it was on day one.

Why is that?

Because to me, I look at this as a way to help me get more steps in my day. And it's easy to do something for a little period of time, but the fact I probably have on average maybe another 1500 steps per day just simply because it. It's a trigger in my world where I actually get specific feedback. And I'm like, okay, I need to go for a little bit of walk. So I'm going to work here for a little bit. Then I'm going to go over to the coffee shop. I can do some work there. And then I'm going to have a phone call. So I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to just pace around my office. And it's always guiding me. I call these performance enhancing devices. So trackers, I think, is not the best way to think of it. Tracker is telling you what you did. Performance enhancing means that it's using that data to actually get you to do more of the good thing. That's what we want. That's what we want.

But another beautiful reframe, man.

Who needs to view it that way? We do. Right. You need to look at it and say, how can. Instead of, how can this help me? You have to look at as, how can I let this help me? Right? How can I use this to support what I want to do? It's going to. It's not going to do anything for me, but it could actually help me get closer to walking 10,000 steps a day. And it's totally. I think this is one of the most powerful health devices that we have that's been created. And it just doesn't get enough credit. Like a lot of the critiques about it on YouTube or in the media, they just want featuritis, right? They just want loads and loads and loads of features. Like, I want to be able to call my Uber for my watch. And, you know, some of that stuff can be cool, but the fact that this is monitoring, like my steps and my sleep and they have breathing programs on it, I mean, this is just. I'm talking about Fitbit because it's an example of really. It's a example of a mindset. I make this help me, right? It's not. It didn't help me, so therefore I'm not using it. You need to go right back, reframe your mindset and then let it help you. And that's analogy. It's a metaphor for everything in the world around health. You're the one doing all the actions. You want to get really good at it. And we're going to try to help you with that in a lot of different ways, make you smarter, make you more knowledgeable about yourself, and actually empower you to make today one that is emblematic or representative of this pattern that you, at least your current thinking is a really good way to live. Right. Cold exposure, hot exposure.

There's the analogy of when we were kids, you know, men, women, young ladies, little boys. It's like we all had this joy of riding a bike or learning how to climb a tree or just this innate fire and curiosity for the enjoyment of something new, something novel. And we know the limbic brain loves novelty. Anyways, I think what happens, and I'd love your take on this. I think as we grow and as we age, our brain, this, you know, obviously the reticular activating system has a big role in this. But we had Dr. Kyrabbane on the show and she talked about the habenula, which is a record keeper for failure. So as we age, as we get more life experience, this record keeper, this habenula literally says, you tried that last time and it didn't work. Don't do that again. And it kills our curiosity, it kills our enjoyment of learning, it kills our quest for new and novel things. So how do we as adults, from your perspective, in so many years in health, behavior and research, how have you implemented this curiosity piece in your own life, ignoring the habenula? And then when you work with clients and speak, has this ever come up?

Yeah, you know, I think any good model will for how to be successful is going to include the appropriate response to failure. Because I fail every day, pretty much, at least in some part of the thing that I want to do. And it's how you respond to that that can you learn. Is there, is there something that you can learn from that you can get a lesson out of that you can then change your behavior in response to it? Are your goals at the moment not really resonating with your ability in your life to execute on? Maybe I need to change. No, I can't make this high intensity class Five times a week. So I need to take a step back and say, what can I do really successfully now? And, you know, there's another example versus just falling off the cliff. Like, I couldn't do. I couldn't do that, therefore, I'm not doing anything. And so I think failure is, you know, it's become really popular now. A lot of people recognize that it's how you respond to it. And I love the Richard Feynman example. So he's a very famous. Known to be one of the smartest people of all time. Physicist. And the Feynman learning technique is one where you basically try to take any concept and explain it to a child. And so you're simplifying complex ideas into as simple as you possibly can. And you go to the place where you can't, your knowledge on that subject or your ability to explain it fails. And then at that point, that's your opportunity. The failure is your opportunity. And you dive into that and you say, okay, let me tighten up this spot. And then you keep trying to, you know, you try to keep going until you really get the whole thing. That right there. Think about how, you know, when we did in school, we got, let's say, a B plus on a test, right? So, all right, I got an 87%. Well, instead of saying, I mean, the way the school should run is you should have. The next day should be for all the people that didn't get 100% coming to class. And here's your 13% that we're going to really help you learn. There's your opportunity. There's your opportunity. You demonstrated that, you know, knew this stuff pretty well, but your opportunity is not that this is how you did, but here's, you know, you can tighten up in these areas. Great. So instead of seeing it as like, oh, I miss them, it's like, these are the places that have been pointed out to me as places that I can go deeper to master this understanding. And so I think we all want to try to do our best and not fail. But failure does happen, and it's how you respond to it. Do you go back and check and tighten up that knowledge as sort of an analogy? So that's. Yeah, I think, you know, there's also some other interesting ideas that over time, there's reason for why we're younger, we are more exploratory. You're incentivized to seek out things because you have a lot of time in your life to implement ideas when you've learned them. And so there's the idea of explore, exploit. As you get older, you have less time. You've had a lot of time to explore different things. And so instead of going, for example, to the new restaurant that just opened up, maybe you just want to go to your favorite Italian restaurant because you're going to try to exploit the fact that you know what you like and you're just going to go do that because you have less time to take advantage of it. And this is some concepts. I'm trying to remember the name of the book, but it was just brilliant. So I think that there's also sort of that natural. Maybe there are evolutionary reasons for it over time too. So you have this. You want to just try everything when you're young and you want to try less and just enjoy the stuff you like when you're older. But I do think that novelty seeking is also been associated. Robert Sapolsky wrote about this. Having that curious mind, trying new things, being in the beginner mindset. Yeah, you might want to still like just go to your favorite restaurant more of the time, but still be trying the new restaurants, still be learning new concepts and reading. And that is really good for, I think, keeping the brain healthy and also the mind young. And I don't just mean the brain, I mean like your mind and your perspective on the world. Like cool. There's still interesting stuff going on that I can learn and I think that you have to have a bit of a balance wherever you are in life.

I've loved the reframes we've discussed, man. And I think about the types of conversations you guys have in your community. Tell people, like, what are you guys focused on? What's the conversations in the human OS community right now in 2018?

Yeah, great question. So we're doing a lot of work with companies and I do work with what I call high performing organizations. And every organization wants to perform really at their best. And when I look at an organization, I just see it as a collection of individuals. And so we work with consumers too, of course. But what I like about working with corporations is I have the ability to go in there and give them sort of a mind frame bending presentation at the start. If I had the luxury of being able to keep everybody captive in a room right off the bat, then that would be incredible. Right, because you could really give somebody a pitch about what you think is needed, how to approach it, things to start and try with. So that's what I do. But then we're also just growing our community, which has been really cool and exciting. And by the way, I want to offer anybody who's listening to just use the code WellnessForce to. It'll make human OS a dollar for the first month. And so you just go to. If you're interested in checking it out, you can try Pro and you can take all the courses you want, check out our recipes and integrate devices. But I'd love to do that for your audience.

Josh, thank you for that. We'll link that in the show notes for sure. There is a bevy of information in there. I've been looking at it.

Yeah, right on. Yeah. So we've got a lot more content coming. We're about to release our Circadian Health course, which is really. There's nothing like it on the Internet right now. A lot of us get the concepts. We realize this is another opportunity to be healthy. And yet this is going to help you understand it at a much deeper level. So that's coming soon. Courses in sleep and athletics. Our Paleo course is almost done. I'm working with this wonderful researcher who just got her PhD, Begonia Nunes Ruiz. I read one of her papers years ago. It's one of my favorites in the space. Contacted her and we've been working on this course on Paleo, which is so. So it's so awesome. It's so awesome.

And I saw your child come out right there, the one that climbed the trees. That was cool.

Yeah, yeah. So lots of good stuff. A lot of good stuff coming.

So we'll link down the show notes today. And I've just had such an incredible time learning from you these past four plus years, you know, and even knowing about your work before we interviewed the first time. I have these last three questions for you and I might want to catch you a little off guard. This will be more fun. We talk about this physical and emotional on the show. And I'm curious for you, Dan, at your age, at your stage of life, and being a father, being a researcher, being a presenter, doing all these things kind of at all times, how do you maintain your emotional intelligence? In other words, is there something you're leaning into right now when you look at emotional intelligence in your life?

You know, my best friend Dave and I had a saying that we just started saying to each other years ago, and I don't even know where it started, but when we were about to address something that was really challenging, like, I've got this huge presentation to whatever on Friday. Just have fun with it. And it just gives you a moment to pause and think, like, yeah, we would talk through it with each other. Like we're not going to not try. It's not like we need to worry about us. Not like, oh, you know, it's now 12 o' clock before I have to give my presentation and I just didn't pay attention till now. That's not gonna happen. And so, you know, can you just enjoy the process? And so I'm always, throughout my day, multiple times, just trying to be really appreciative and have gratitude for the fact that I get to be in this place where I can affect how people live, how I, how I live and then also do the same and try to be very present. So then when I go play Legos with my son, I'm not thinking about my work, but I'm just like in the Legos and we're just doing that and just trying to be super present in whatever I'm doing and that's where I am. And I'm not thinking about messages. I just won't even look at my phone. And yeah, I think that that's kind of a cool secret in a way. Just not having the FOMO about what's happening all around you and just being.

Where you are and that can be super challenging, Dan, in this world of social media and ultimate connectivity. Right. So thank you for sharing, man. And I think about the physical intelligence that you have. I actually learned the term movement stack from you and I think about this long day that we all have. Sometimes people work 14 hours a day. How do you maintain your highest level of physical intelligence? You know, being in your body, being in good health and having a solid body with no pain and full range of movement. What is your physical intelligence practice? How do you maintain that throughout the day?

I think about this throughout my day, every day. What can I eat now that's going to help me perform really well? How hungry actually am I? What's my hydration? When was the last time I moved? I have a slack line outside my office and so before our call I got on, I did some slack line work just to get neuromuscular systems firing later. I know that I've been standing here for a little while now, so after we get off the call, I'm going to actually go do some mobility work. I'll probably do daily yoga, which is a video program on human OS. It's like 5 to 10 minute yoga snacks and I'm mixing it in. I try to not to save being healthy for after my day, but how do I mix it into my day to support my day and then it's kind of nice. By the time the night comes, I'm done with my work work. I'm done with my physical work. Now, I think the best approach, because I have tried to do just things like intune training, which we didn't go into detail today about, but I know we will soon. I've tried to do just that and I have. So I would walk a lot and do intuit training. I really love having sort of a balance where I go to a class and I love being around people and there's a. Like, there's places that I can walk to. And so that that's all part of the healthfulness of the activity. You know, having something to get up for, going for a walk, seeing friends and saying hi. And so I have sort of my daily maintenance stuff and then I have my sort of health adventures. Right. You know, like, all right, I'm going to go to this yoga class in hot yoga and I'm going to get out of my world to go do that. And I like always having some stuff that I'm like really into right now. It's again, it was hot yoga and it'll be different probably in a couple months. And then I always have my daily maintenance. And so it's like I'm trying and then I'm just sort of taking care of the body. And the cool thing is that you feel better when you do. It's a win win. So I think one thing that if people, we always are going to get off, like, let's say you get sick or you've been traveling and you've been super busy just starting really gently and getting back into it and aiming to enjoy it first and foremost. And then if you can enjoy it, then it just, it's so much easier to do it because you're going to look forward to it. And then as you get more fit, you can go harder and that feels good. And you know, I think what happens is people will get out of their routine and then they'll go work out really hard and they'll feel like crap for a couple days and it's really hard to do it again and then they're afraid of it. So be really gentle to yourself and just have this sort of ebbing and flowing in the reality of your life. But seek to have fun with it, right? Seek to really enjoy the smoothies you make, to really enjoy the food that you create and the meals that you have. Just enjoying it is actually one of the probably the most important things to a Successful health practice over the lives of ah.

And enjoyment, really, in this world where there is all these distractions, that mindset of enjoying and being present, it's a muscle. Just like going to the gym and doing squats, it is a muscle. And I think I first fought Gretchen Rubin when she said this, Dan. She was like, you know, people can just choose to be happy. And I thought, well, that's true, but there's some work that we all get to do before we flick that light switch. Right. It's not always that simple. So thank you for reminding us about that. And the last question is at the intersection of both of these things, man, it's wellness. It's living your life. Well, that's what we're all innately here. All these creatures, they don't have any trouble with it outside. Our dogs and cats, they all know how to do it. But somehow we fall short on this. Stan, how do you believe in your life? Wellness is now. What's your definition of wellness now?

Yeah, so part of wellness is pride in that I'm attending to this thing that is really important. So part of it is that sense of feeling really good that every day I am doing things to take care of my body. Because the results of not doing that start to show up around my, you know, my age. Depending on how poorly you live, can be earlier and they become increasingly noticeable for those who live well and those who choose to, you know, that haven't found a way to kind of create those health habits in their life. And, you know, it also, it's not just how many years you live, but as David Katz says from Yale, it's the life in your years, you know. And so I love this one, this saying that everything you care to do well, you'll do better when you take care of the person doing it right. You know, take care of yourself. And then don't just be about that. Like, be this person. Like, of course, our careers are dedicated to this. So it's so much of what we do. But let that fuel your interactions with people. Let that fuel other hobbies you pursue and other pieces of information you pursue. You know, let that be a source of energy. So I think that that's, for me, wellness is in part the pride of taking care of my body and feeling really good about that, even if it's just little things here and there.

Man, I love the fact that you brought pride into a positive light. Cause I think pride has gotten, at least in the personal development world, a little bit of a negative light. So thank you so much, man. I wanna acknowledge the work you've done for so long and I know that you'll continue to do to serve people through Humanos me. Thanks so much. By the way, for a dollar you can get all this access to courses and everything. It'll be in the show notes for WellnessForce.com radio check out more of Dan's work. Join Human OS. Keep the conversation going like we're going to continue to talk about this loving care of our ownership in changing our state and in the way that we eat, move, think, feel and act. Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show man and all the work you do.

Absolutely. I want to ask people listening to do one thing. So think about something that you would like to learn about at health and drop us a note. You can come to Humanoid and do it. You can do it on, you know the. When you post this on social media, do it on Facebook, whatever. Just I want to, I want Humanoid to create some educational content on this and we will take those super seriously and we'd love to know what you'd like to learn because we want to. We love educating and creating and we learn ourselves every time we do and we have a whole new method about how to do that well. But I would be honored if you guys shared your thoughts. So please do.

Okay, he's talking to you. So right now put down your phone or at least go to the Human OS Facebook page and let him know. Dan, thanks so much again man for coming on the podcast.

Thanks so much Josh. Have a great day.

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