How To FIND THE HEALTH You’re Looking For With Dan Pardi

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Wellness force radio episode 88 with health and human behavior specialist Dan Pardee.

Are you still. Are you still counteracting the forces of modern society to keep you in this zone where you benefit? It's a whole different challenge. A lot of what our culture supports as health is askew from what's really needed. Unfortunately, the scientific discourse oftentimes can become polarized. Camps form, they battle each other and then it's more about winning than being right. We love new and new ideas burst onto the scene. They get a lot of attention and. And there's just a lot of remaining questions that need to be answered.

Welcome back to another episode, my friend. I am your host, Josh Trent. Thank you for spending your time with me here on the podcast. This is where every week I'm bringing you access to global experts in all things wellness, behavior change and new technologies. On this podcast, you'll learn from exceptional people who are dedicating their lives to being a positive force for our physical and emotional wellness. My intention with the show is that together we'll. We'll discover the connections between our emotions and healthy habits to live our best life and enjoy the process. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Supplements, a company I'm stoked to partner with who truly walks the talk with their values of pesticide free non GMO real food supplements that fuel us for the wellness journey, support the show and save some money in the process. Go to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce Enter code wellnessforce to get 10% off your entire order. With all the health information out there, this ocean of articles and links and experts, it can be incredibly frustrating to try to find the health you're looking for. Well, today we are bringing on Dan Pardee for his return to Wellness Force Radio to understand this truth versus fiction in health research. Trust me when I say you're gonna wanna hear this episode more than once. Dan has almost 20 years facilitating health behaviors in others. He is the developer of the Loop model to sustain health behaviors to help people live a healthy lifestyle. Crazy, hectic and sometimes insane modern world. Dan does research with the Psychiatry and Behavioral sciences department at Stanford. He also works with the department of Neurology and endocrinology at Leaning University in the Netherlands. He specializes in building systems for health, behavior optimization and habit building, along with energy homeostasis, cognition, decision making, which we'll talk a lot about today. How to make those proper decisions when it comes to your unique health, and lastly, physiology of sleep, exercise and inactivity. Dan also has some pretty incredible projects. He works with the Navy Special Warfare to help the most elite fighters in the world maintain their vigilant performance in combat and non combat conditions. Dan also formerly served as the board chairman of the Investigator Initiated Sponsored Research association which is a global nonprofit aimed to promote best practices in the arena of academic research grants. You're going to take away so much value from this episode. By the end of the show, you'll understand self determination theory, why motivation doesn't always work, how to clarify your exact health problem and why that's the number one step. How to get away from novelty seeking and take that deeper dive into knowing what's helpful for you and your unique situation and how to build skills for sustainable health, behavior change, how to not get lost in that ocean of information out there, because in the ocean there's tons of predators. Have you ever downloaded something or read an article then only to figure out that it was funded by the people who are selling the product? Well, today Dan's gonna give us those tools on how to not get lost in the research and find the health you're looking for. Let's jump into this educational and exciting conversation with Dan Pardee. Dan, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me back, Josh. I'm really happy to be here.

This is so exciting, man. You know, this is round two, our first episode. We talked about how to live this healthy lifestyle in our crazy modern world. But today, something just as important, and that is how do we learn? How do we go from an interesting idea to something that has a direct impact on our life, man? So thanks for coming on, sharing your knowledge with us, Dan, all the way from San Francisco.

Oh, yeah, no, this is really taking a deeper dive into what we talked about last time, which was a bit of a broader framework. And now we're looking at some of the mechanics of it, which learning is a real critical piece to that. So I'm happy to get into this further with you today.

Clarifying the problem is the first step, right? I mean, anybody that has a health concern, they want to let go of weight, they want to improve their stress response, whatever it is, Dan, they first have to clarify the problem, right? So if someone's interested in health. How do they do this, man? How do they cut through the ocean of information out there so that it's applicable to them in their life?

I think clarifying the problem is one of the best techniques that one can use to solve any problem. Taking a little bit extra time because you have an idea of what the problem is in your mind, but thinking it through from beginning to really completion is critical because then it frames the problem sometimes a little bit differently. So, for example, even talking about weight loss, there's a lot of techniques out there, for example, where that will help you go from one body fat level to the next. But that's where a lot of people will stop thinking like, okay, hey, I lost £20. But that's not really what people want. People want to lose 20 pounds or more or whatever, and then they want to sustain it. So if you think about what that problem is, you six months, you know, you want to be able to actually lose weight, and then six months later, you want to be the new weight still. That's the full picture of the problem. And you know, not. Not that this is a talk about weight loss, but it's something that I've been thinking about a lot. There are certain techniques, there's a lot of ways to lose that 20 pounds, but not all of them will put you in the same position to sustain it long term. And so you have to think about, okay, as simple as that is, what is it that I want? And it means that, you know, in this case, which is a very real scenario, you want to be able to have something that is efficacious at helping you reduce body fat, and one that helps put you in a position where again, you know, a while after that, a year or two, forever really, that's what you really want. You want to be at that lowered body fat level so that you can, you know, live life with less body fat on yourself. So similarly, if we think about health, what is the challenge overall with health? Well, we have to fight the modern lifestyle, which we talked about lapse last time. All of these different forces that get us to live in a manner that is actually not that healthy for us, which if we do not resist, they will lead predictably to chronic disease. And, you know, none of us want that. Yeah, but the other problem that we also face is that it'll impair daily performance. And what I mean by that is that how well you show up for the things that you care about, including your relationships with your family, including how well you are attacking and achieving your Goals, performing at work, social relationships. All of these are influenced by the health of. Of you and. And in a very legitimate way. And I think that's an interesting behavioral technique also, because the intangibility of downstream potential health consequences, while scary, is less powerful than, say, and then a tighter feedback loop of, you know, once you start doing the right things, you can benefit immediately.

Yeah.

Think about tomorrow. Think about tomorrow. Do you want to show up and perform well tomorrow at life? And I use that a lot to actually help me do the right things. Nobody goes for a run to say, hey, I'm going to go out for a run so that I don't get peripheral arterial disease.

Yeah, that's probably not the first thing on their mind. That's interesting, too, because there's so much novelty out there, right? I mean, our attention spans are shorter than ever, and there's so much information. There is literally an ocean that people swim through. So this novelty piece, I mean, on one hand, we have people that are maybe just starting a journey of better health and they're seeking different things. They can actually start ticking the box and not really do the work. You know, they'll collect all the articles, they'll seek new stimulus and new novelty. But how do they transition, Dan, to taking that deeper dive into what the academic literature says to be helpful and also what the research shows to be helpful. How do they transition from novelty to application?

Yeah, and I am going to unapologetically weave in Human os, which is the company I'm launching in a. And soon. Soon.

Yes, we are stoked, man. I'm going to link that in the show notes today as well. So that'll be at the show notes today. Well, force.com humanos just a nice plug for you right there as well, because we are stoked about that, man. Definitely.

Okay, cool. And the reason I want to bring it up is because very directly we're trying to solve some of these problems. So I'm going to describe our approach and how to do it. So, as you say, there's a lot of information out there. And if somebody's really interested, then what is a common problem that we face? Well, people will oftentimes trend hop. What do I mean by that? Well, their health practice right now, and what I mean by health practice is the sequence of activities that somebody is actually engaging in to try to be healthy is determined by the last thing that they read or something that they read recently. And we know that the journalistic incentives are oftentimes more about clicks than clarity. Right. And it's not trying to, you know, blame some, you know, somebody else for your health issues, but it's true, right? So oftentimes a result of somebody who's interested is that, gosh, this stuff is just so confusing because I read one thing one day that said this, and then the next day I read something else that said that. And the fact of the matter is that if you were to plot on a graph, you know, let's say research in one area, you would see there would be a scatter plot, there'd be information all over the graph. What you really want to do is try to figure out what is that trend line that goes right through all of the range of data. Because, you know, the trend line is what is. Is what you actually care about is like, hey, is this thing going in the good direction or the bad? Direct. Because you can paint a very interesting picture by looking at the three studies out of 25 that say the opposite than the rest of the 22, right? And hey, gosh, if you only heard about those three studies, it would seem really convincing. So that is really the issue that is placed on people's shoulders when they're trying to figure out something for their health on a certain topic. Who has time to go through all of that information and maybe even have the skill to read scientific information in the right way? And I thought to myself, this is a problem that we can solve. We can get the right people that have the right backgrounds to do this, to then create a method by which we analyze information and then present it to people in a manner that is almost like an executive summary of what the main theme of the research tells us, the preponderance of the evidence tells us, and to do so in a manner that helps people retain the information even greater than if they read a book. Much better, in fact. So six months after, if you've taken, let's say, a course, which is what we're creating, then you would be able to tell a friend who asked, tell me about fasting, and you took the fasting course, and then be able to do that. And the better that they are able to do that, the better they are able to benefit from that information in their life. And that is our goal. That's our goal is to do a lot of the work for people presented to them in a manner that helps them learn and even speak to it and think about that. So you could spend even more time reading a bunch of articles on fasting and listening to even podcasts, et cetera. And I just chose that topic randomly, but let's use it and you might not still be benefiting from it, where if you are actually walked through the information in a better manner, then you could have a skill that you could benefit from the rest for the rest of your life. For the rest of your life. And that's really exciting to me that a little bit of effort spent by the interested person can benefit them forever. And then I think that's where tweets, podcasts, blogs can actually come into play. They can be reminders, but I think that they're insufficient as educational tools overall. They can actually help you understand that a topic might be interesting, but they're oftentimes insufficient to get you to a place where you. You really know the information well enough to benefit from it.

What I'm hearing from you is that with the attention spans dropping, I think that we now, Time magazine reported, have less attention span than a goldfish. I don't know if you saw that article, but basically what you're saying is with the right education and the right background, someone like yourself and your team, you can go in, you can pull out the gems that'll really elicit positive change so that people don't have to spend thousands of hours doing all of that work. So I think that's a beautiful way to just meet us where we are, Dan. There is more on our calendars, there is more in our schedules than ever before. One of the cool things, and actually I want to tell you this live on air, we put your voice in our new show intro because I loved a quote that you said last year when we had you on the show, and you said knowing without doing is the same thing as not knowing. What really matters is if the knowledge that you have will give you an effective health practice for the long term. I loved that quote so much because there is a bridge, Dan. There's a bridge between knowing. There's a bridge between doing. Do you feel like your work with human OS is that bridge? And what was that road to creating? I know it's coming out next year. Tell us about the bridge, man.

Yeah, you know, I think I'm pretty relentless with thinking about again, going back to the very beginning of the show, what is the problem we're really trying to solve? And it's actually thousands of little problems. So there's the big picture problem and there's lots of even little problems. Like now we're talking about, you know, learning. Put it one of them. One problem is mindset. Do people have the right mindset to help themselves that's really critical. And can we put somebody into a better mindset in order for that to help them benefit? So I see people that are interested in health having tons of potential to be helped. And we're then dedicated, spending our days, 10 hours a day, reading, writing, analyzing, critiquing. And I think that that is what a good company can do, is they can make it easier for somebody to benefit in this case from this very confusing topic of health. But you could also do it for finances. Right. But a big picture then a big piece of this is that people, and this is why I was talking about mindset, people need to be a part of this. Right. There's a little bit of a perspective, maybe tacitly implied, that technology will actually solve the problem for us. I think the better mindset is that we're going to solve our own problem and technology can help, but all the technology in the world will not help you if you don't pick it up and use it. If you have a perspective that like, for example, we talked about this last time, step counters, right. If you think of it as a bad exercise tracker and then you don't really think that steps matter, then there's really no, you can't reduce the friction enough on that thing in order for it to help you. You have to empower a step counter with value. You have to empower helpful technology with value in order for it to then be a useful servant, a useful, you know, something that can get you to do the right thing. But who's doing the right thing? You are.

Sure.

You're the one that's doing the right thing. There is no technology out there that's going to take a soul cycle class for you or go to a cross.

That class for you.

Right?

Right.

But what can technology do? It can tell you where classes are, it can tell you what time they are. It can remind you to sign up. And so having that sort of. Right. Mindset is, I think, you know, the first thing that you want to actually, if you're bringing somebody into this ecosystem which is, you know, human os, the first thing we're going to do is not start talking about fasting and the Mediterranean diet and weight loss and whatever. We're going to talk about you and your mindset. And from there you will be in a position to benefit from all the other information that we are spending months and months to analyze to create one, you know, incredible educational product. But again, education alone is not sufficient. Right. We can't just, you know, even lob information provisions at people and have them even be effective. Right. Let's say you had this, you know, theoretical fictitious person that had a PhD in, you know, nutritional sciences and exercise physiology and sleep neurobiology. Information alone does not vaccinate you from needing to live a healthy lifestyle. And sadly, I know quite a few very educated people that have more knowledge than most, if any, on a particular topic that don't benefit from their own information because they haven't made that bridge.

Oh my gosh, I forget what guest it was, but somebody told us that they had a nutrition teacher that was morbidly obese. And during the course the teacher said, listen, you guys understand that even though I teach this subject, I'm still a human being and I'm still working on the mindset piece. So I'm so glad you mentioned that, man, because there's many doctors out there, there's a lot of people who might be in the health and or wellness industry, yet they're still on their learning curve. Right? They're still figuring out how do I change from within, you know. A recent interview you had on Humanos Radio. We'll link in the show notes today. It was with a guest, Dustin Tommaso, right? Is that how you pronounce his last name? Yeah, Dustin Tomaso.

Dustin Di Tomaso.

Yeah, Dustin Di Tomaso. And it was on the most advanced understanding of how to optimize motivation. You guys touched on self determination theory. Now, we haven't really gone over this, so I wanna read the definition and then leave it up to you here. Because self determination is a theory of motivation. It's concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in an effective, healthy way. What is this self determination theory? Dan, how are you plugging that into human os?

Yeah, so, you know, I think we did talk about this last time, but when I started, one of the. My personal story is that I was studying cancer. My dad was diagnosed with cancer. I tried to help him. I threw a lot of information at him. He was proud of me, but he didn't implement any of it. And when he passed away, I knew that I needed to understand human behavior better. And that started really a period of time for me where I. I tried to understand it very deeply. And I talk about that a bit at the Ancestral Health Symposium a few years ago or I talk about behavior. I can send you a link to that if people want to take a look. So behavior models are something that describe, predict or explain when behavior happens, what happened, what was it that changed? Where did the person go from to what were those conditions that facilitated it. And, and similarly, self determination theory is a model that is trying to understand what human motivation is. And we tend to think of motivation as something that you either have more or less of. I'm more motivated to have this, or I have less motivation to do this. But actually, you can divide it into many different types of categories. Generally, those categories can be grouped. One is sources of controlled motivation, and the other group is sources of autonomous motivation. So controlled motivation is you have things that are fit into something called an external bucket. And this is when you get external rewards, like, oh, I met my step goal at my company and therefore I get a Starbucks card or some sort of gift or a T shirt or whatever. So you're getting rewarded externally by doing something. Now, similarly, you could also be punished. Right? You could actually have something taken away. And if you think about punishment, it's either the application of an aversive stimuli, so something you get hit, for example.

Or you have to pay 20 bucks to a friend or something.

Exactly. Right?

Yeah.

Now, it's not that these things cannot influence motivation, they absolutely can, but it's a category of motivation. Now, there's other one called interjected, and this is where this is similar, but it's more about the internal feeling. So it's guilt or anxiety about doing something. Gotta get to get to the gym today or I'm gonna feel just terrible. And then, then you see a lot of this with, you know, the Fitzpa, you know, inspiration on Instagram, which is pride and ego fulfillment. Right. So, hey, I'm feeling really good right now and I'm gonna post pictures of myself at the gym. And you feel proud. And you're also then getting people saying, hey, great job, you're doing really, really good, awesome work. What happens though, when you, let's say you've gotten to some sort of peak either in terms of leanness and muscle gain or bench press, whatever, and now you're £20 off of that and you're actually far less lean than you were because you hurt yourself then if that was a primary source of motivation to get you into the gym, then all of a sudden you could go from really consistent, really into it to, I didn't go to the gym for six months. So it's not that these things can't motivate you, but they can be more fragile in their ability to keep you on the right path long term. So not that they're, hey, these are all sources of motivation, but there's qualities to each of them. And Understanding the entire spectrum is use. So as you move along then from controlled motivation, these are external things and some internal that are influencing what you're doing and why. I mean even the internal ones are more about an external source influencing you like somebody else's perspective or if you think that they think you're cool or that you know, things like that.

Yeah.

Then you have more autonomous. And this is. You're doing things for a different set of reasons. This is more personal importance. Right. You are consciously valuing that the, you know, exercising for. I'll just continue to use the exercise example but obviously it applies to a lot of things that you're. You value this as important in your life.

Right.

It's part of your own internal belief system. And then as you move from identified to integrated to intrinsic, these. This is part of this autonomous motivational spectrum. You have a self concept. You're doing something because this is a part of who you are and that's really actually important. So you're not running for the gift card. You're running even when it's raining out and all, you know, there's so many reasons why you shouldn't. And you're outside running because it is a part of fulfilling your own personal identity.

Oh man, this is so powerful. We had Brett Hobel, he was one of the trainers from the Biggest Loser, Dan and I asked him, you know, how do people actually keep the weight off in the long term? And he said, listen, I'm gonna be honest with you guys. The reality is that many of them don't because the mental hooks, the psychological framework that existed can only be transcended when there is that autonomous motivation like you're. He said that most of them that keep the weight off, they become trainers themselves.

Yes.

Do you think that's the autonomous motivation in real life?

Yes, I do. And the even the next step to that is actually very important. So this is what we were just talking about is identified and integrated, but the next component of it is intrinsic. And what does that mean? Well, this is when you actually there starts to be that right. In actual like physiological. And doesn't start to be. It can happen all the way along the way, but it's. Your reward system is tied in with doing the behavior and so it becomes just absolutely joyful for you to go for a hike. You know, so now I can explain a lot of scientific reasons about why going for a hike is good for me and that can actually be a part of my motivation to get out the door. But the best motivation for me Is that I. Gosh, I just love it. It, you know, I just love doing it.

Yes, dude, I am clenching my fist right now. I've talked about this with clients, I've talked about this with previous guests where we say there is a construct of either joy or pain.

How do we.

How do we be healthy? How do we have abundant health from a place of relaxed energy where we're enjoying the process, we're trusting the process, or what a lot of kind of the paradigm is in the fitness industry. You're not good enough. You need to look a certain way, you need to get healthy. Otherwise you're going to be seen as someone who is not valuable or whatever. Whatever it is. There's two spokes of the wheel, right? And one of them is relaxation coming from a place of love. The other one's coming from a place of fear. Scientifically, this love and fear, have you ever contrasted that? I'm curious. This is kind of off the cuff right now, but on one side we have love. On one side, we have fear. Scientifically, how does that work in our brain in regards to health habits?

Well, you know, these are just two different components of the motivational spectrum. So the fear is going to be more around the interjected, controlled motivation. So this is kind of the guilt and anxiety and, like, worry about, am I actually going to do it? Am I going to get to the gym today? Now, that can still be helpful. It can still be helpful as long as it doesn't consume you. And it's actually even more helpful when you have a full spectrum of motivational resources at your disposal. So if, you know, you love going for a hike and having a little anxiety to get out the door is, you know, because you're just, like, worried about. Like, if you can figure it out in your day today, then am I.

Going to plug it in?

Yeah, yeah, that's okay. Okay. You know, I think instead of thinking about moving, you know, through from autonomous to. Excuse me, from control to autonomous motivation as being like a singular, you know, like, in fact, you move from group to group. I almost like to think of it as, can you. How do you leverage all the sources of motivation? I mean, heck, even if you absolutely love it, that's when I think that the external, you know, controlled motivational sources have even more value getting them. You know, the gift card is fun. It just makes it more fun and engaging. And it helps you, like, you know, have maybe something else that you can share your passion and love with socially with your work colleagues. It helps you connect with Them. But when you're only doing it for the external motivation, you're like, you know, I really hate doing this. I'm not doing it. But, you know, I'm getting, let's say, a pretty significant deduction on my. My health insurance. Then I'll do it. But, you know, if. Let's say you get a $200 gift card for Amazon, well, what ends up happening is that in order for that to have motivate, you know, to continue to motivate you, it's going to have to be $250 the next quarter, then 300. It's gonna. It has to keep going up.

It's almost like a reward drug.

Yeah, exactly. That's. That's a great analogy. That's a great analogy, Josh. And that's exactly right.

God. So. So why. Why is the brain built that way, Dan? I mean, you have been studying this. It's been almost 20 years, right, that you've actually been studying human behavior in the brain?

Gosh, yeah. I mean, in some form. I mean, through my. My pretty keen interest in human behavior started probably about 10 years ago, but before that I was touching upon it, and a lot of things that I was doing related to. I wasn't thinking about it explicitly, but I was. I was definitely interested in it, you know, scientifically. So looking at, you know, my research particularly looks at, for example, like, eating behaviors and sleep loss. So I was always interested in behavior and decision making and things like that. But, yeah, so I think you were saying, why do things need to kind of like, why does the reward need to get bigger?

Yeah. Why does the growth continually have to be there in order for our motivation to be sustainable?

Yeah, well, I think part of that is. So I don't know if there's a singular answer to it because it might depend on the actual situation itself, but oftentimes it's the idea of the reward that is actually better than the reward itself. And so if the reward is going to be the exact same as it was last time, it might lose a little bit of its luster. But if it's a little bit more than next time, then maybe that still holds that mystery to it. And that's what makes it appealing and enticing. And again, there's a lot of context here, but I think in situations where you need escalating kind of motivational amount, that is, what's going on is that there is a little bit you get there and it's a little bit less exciting than you thought it was going to be. So you have to then make it even higher to kind of keep that motivation going.

I can so relate because in my 20s, when we talked about this self determination theory, I can look back from a vantage point and see that I was definitely satisfying my physical and my psychological desires to be accepted. But the social need piece, I think that's one that people don't really put enough attention to. How do they plug into their social circle? There's a lot of studies around being accepted and how formulating a group of friends can actually reduce CHD more than dietary intervention. So having human connection be a piece of our health behaviors, what does the research show about this, Dan? I mean, we all know that our nutrition, our sleep, our lifestyle habits are very important in living a long, healthy, happy life. But what about the social aspect? What about human connection? What does the research show there?

In 2000, I finished my master's in exercise physiology at Florida State University, and I came back and I got an internship working with the Preventative Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito with Dean Ornish. We were looking at a lifestyle program for prostate cancer patients. In that lifestyle program, there was a nutritional intervention, there was exercise, there was stress management, there was interpersonal communication between you and your spouse, recognizing that a lot of men that age, they leave their job, a lot of their friendships were with people at their work, and a lot of men had actually lost social connections with their friends over time. And then all of a sudden, these men who've left their work were cut off from so much of their social community. And so, yes, the research is powerful. That shows that it has a very serious impact on our internal hormonal milieu. And a lot of work that was done by Dan Siegel showed that women who have breast cancer on an identical treatment do far better if they're in a weekly support group. And so it's funny, we have this idea of health and nutrition and exercise, et cetera, but if you, again, kind of like take. If you take a step back and you think, well, what are we really trying to do with those things? With exercise and nutrition, we're trying to affect the internal hormonal milieu of the body. We're trying to provide certain types of stimulation to the body to keep it strong and healthy, what other ways are there to do that? And I think what you end up building is actually more kind of complex, but also more robust framework for how to be healthy. And it's funny, I'm building a course right now for human OS called the Enduring Mover. It's something that I've given this presentation a lot to different corporations, Adobe to Pandora to Intuitive, Surgical, et cetera, lots of vc. And it's a very interesting presentation because our ideas of what exercise is in, you know, the kind of modern Western culture are a little bit off from what we see in cultures like Blue Zones, where Dan Bueter reported that out of the 30 different societies that they studied, none of them exercises, we know it. You know, they have exercise woven into our day. And by the way, Blue Zones are cultures that live to or beyond 100 with greater frequency than other populations in this.

Oh, yeah, Sardinia is one of them, right?

Sardinia.

Sicily.

That's right. Sardinia, Icaria. Now, when you're looking at all these different influences, it's hard to say, okay, well, what was it about that lifestyle pattern that was, you know, the cause of the, you know, cause of these great benefits? You can't really do it from the epidemiological work, but what epidemiological work is good for is helping you understand that something interesting is going on here. And then you can do different levels of scientific research, like, you know, prospective interventional studies, where you actually take two different groups and you put them on one, you know, one intervention, the other groups on a, you know, control intervention, and then you can look at it more closely. And so that has been done as well. And so the. Essentially, we can sometimes let our perception of what. What value means distract from doing actually the things that are much more accessible, that are within our reach. And that's sad to me. And I think that that's part of what we're. What I'm aiming to do here is actually reset some of those perspectives about what needs to be done, because health is very accessible, and a lot of it is just incredibly enjoyable. You do not need to be. But not to, like, pick on CrossFit, but you don't. You don't need to be throwing up after a workout, like their mascot in order.

Yeah, I was gonna say it was a clown throwing up. Right. In 2009, that was their logo.

That's right. That's right. But think about how. Think about how that that idea can scare away somebody from doing any exercise at all because they, you know, they're like, oh, wow, these people are so fit. They're so healthy. We're holding these people as, like, the apotheosis of what health means. And really, I mean, there's a difference between really fitness and, you know, physical activity for proper health stimulation. And so with a lot of. A lot of what Our culture supports as health is askew from what's really needed. But once you have like again, proper perspective, or at least you're walked through a perspective that you feel is convincing, then you have again a little mini framework within a larger one in order for you to then make better decisions. But fact of the matter is, you know, you have more control over your health than anybody else, your doctors, anything else. And some people almost feel like that's an accusation. I actually think that it puts the control back in your hands and it doesn't mean that you're the only person that is, you know, responsible. Other. You know, there are other responsible parties as well. I like taking on the responsibility and I think others should as well embrace it and say, okay, I've got a lot of decisions to make. I'm gonna make them informed, right? And if beliefs are programs for actions, then you have to be operating under the right set of information.

A big part of our emotional health comes from how we feed our body and how satiated we are throughout the day. It's hard to treat other people well and think good thoughts if you're walking around hangry. One of the best ways to cure satiety and satiation is to add in powdered collagen into your drinks, your waters, and into your foods. I use perfect supplements, collagen. It's sourced from 100% grass fed cows. That means there's no horm, synthetics or pesticides because these are healthy cows that eat grass. These sick cows eat corn. So beyond these healing powers of collagen for digestion and joint health, it also has 20 grams of protein in two scoops, which helps to curb appetite and increase that satiety. One of the cool things about this powdered collagen is there's individual packets. You can mix it in water and you know what it tastes like water. I mean, suddenly my glass has 10 grams, 20 grams of protein. And all the health benefits of having this non GMO pasteurized collagen in my body, Give me some. So don't walk around hangry. Pick up your grass fed collagen. Feel better in your emotional body and your physical body every day. It's part of the Wellness Force radio audience bundle. That's a heavily discounted package just for this audience. Go to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce Enter code wellnessforce and save 10% on top of the already discounted package. So big. So big, man. And you know, I'm curious too, because in a recent interview with Dr. David Kim Katz from Yale, you were quoted here. This is unique. You said as well intentioned as someone might be. I frequently find myself getting frustrated. Not when somebody's passionate and wrong about an issue, but when people can be overly confident and dismissive of mainstream medicine's consensus in favor of their own opinion, which leads to their own financial reward. I think this is a beautiful segue because there's a lot of people that are searching in the ocean of information. And guess what? There's a lot of people in the ocean that are saying, my way is the only way. Way. How do you cut through that noise? Why did you say that quote? I mean, it was really powerful.

Yeah, it's part of what drives me. And so now I come along and why should you believe me? Well, don't. What are we doing with our health courses? Well, we have, first of all, we have a method. And so we're gonna educate on what that method is to arrive at the answer. It's kind of like show your work back in math class you could have the right answer, but how'd you get there? Yeah, and then we're having all of our courses peer reviewed, so don't trust us. But then we're going to send it to academics who are published in the in on this subject and they're going to critique it. And then after that, once they're published and they're live and people are viewing them, if somebody offers a criticism of, let's say, one of the courses that we happen to agree with, we're going to be open minded to say, okay, hey, our community just offered a way for us to improve this and we're going to then version the courses. So course could be version 1, 1.1, 1.2. And so my goal is not to be. I'm right, you're wrong. The goal is to say, how do we communicate the best possible information on this subject matter in order to help people be healthy? And we're going to continue to evolve it as long as we continue to find opportunities or see ways to do that to make it better. So we're of service to this idea and that's how I view it. And I think people will probably like, okay, yeah, so they're very transparent about their method. And I like the fact that they're peer reviewed. I mean, that's what we do in scientific journals, right? We write the best possible paper that we can, then we send it out to a group of reviewers that do their best to find faults in it in order to make it better. That's how science works.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people do cherry picking where they might go and just scour the research, but the only pull out the studies that are shown on the NIH or PubMed that actually benefit their thesis.

Right, Absolutely. And you know, Dr. Katz actually mentioned that in the study that some people can make very convincing arguments and you have to know so much in order to know that they're wrong and that there's a lot of that that's going out there, that's going on out there. And so, you know, do I think that we're going to ever be communicating perfection? I'm not promising that at all. All. But because science is always changing. But let's say we put out something where we make a recommendation to do, you know, let's say, you know, all right, here's our education and this is what we think you should do now based off of the research. And then something comes along that actually changes our position. Will I defend it at all costs and try to create these, you know, awkward explanations that, you know, justify our previous position? No, you know, we're going to actually say, great, okay, we're going to be the first to help you understand how the science has changed, modify accordingly. Now, of course you should be able to defend how you feel. That's good. But unfortunately, the scientific discourse oftentimes can become polarized. Camps form, they battle each other and then it's more about winning than being right. And I just, I'm not interested in taking part in that. I want to help, you know, to be as kind of what we're doing, put the information that we're putting out there, be informed, as informed as possible to then help, you know, help as much as possible.

And the power in this man is that you almost going back full circle to our first 10 minutes, this sense of belonging to a group, the people that might cherry pick, maybe it's somebody who has 500,000 followers on Facebook and they're putting out a new book or they have a program that they're selling. There is a vested cost and a vested interest in why they would defend their point at all costs. But you talked about in the beginning of the show clarifying the problem. You are very clear with what you're doing. You know, you human os helps people map master their health. Because all this technology in the world, it's like, that's great that technology is there, but you have to pick it up and use it and you have to use it the right way. So the clarity that you have with Human os. What did that look like in formulating that clarity?

Yeah, well, I think starting by developing a behavior model was really useful. Instead of, you know, I put a lot of work into developing this thesis originally, and then. And then from there it's been developing tools around it, and so that really hasn't changed that much. And the executive summary of the behavior model, which I discussed last time, is, why should you do something? How do you do it? Are you doing it, and is it working? And each one of those is a really different piece. You can see the why should you do something? Is really more of the persuasive argument around a particular subject about why it's valuable, why it affects your health, why it's worth your attention, or even maybe why it's not worth your attention, like why it's really interesting. But there's only one study on it, so better to take, you know, to put your effort elsewhere. Right. So it's not all about being promotional. It's actually just about being kind of clear. Because oftentimes what happens is we love new and new ideas burst onto the scene. They get a lot of attention, and there's just a lot of remaining questions that need to be answered. That's a problem as well. Okay, so then it's like, how do I do it? Right. So it's definitely different from knowing that it's important to knowing actually how to do it. Can you create mastery experiences for people? Can you facilitate helping go from I'm interested to I know how, I know how to do it, and then that's one thing. That's great, but are you doing it? And so five years from now that you've learned, let's say, something a couple years ago, are you still doing it? Are you still counteracting the forces of modern society to keep you in this zone where you benefit? It's a whole different challenge.

And I think the hard part about that, too, is that defeating the novelty piece. So that novelty piece, you know, you talked about the lifestyle framework. Why should you do it? Are you doing it, and is it working? Where does the novelty piece fit in there? And how do we overcome that novelty in that loop model?

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And, you know, it's interesting because there's parallels to the US election that just happened. But if you are, let's say you're unsatisfied with your physical state, you are more likely to then try something that has been less tested in order to just jostle just to create some change.

Testosterone therapy, Atkins, whatever. It is just something just out of scarcity.

That's right. Out of a little bit of. What's the word I'm looking for?

Kind of fear, really?

Well, fear and desperation. That's the word. You, you, you're really wanting change, so you're willing. But what ends up, what could end up very, what could end up happening is that you could put yourself in a worse position by then trying something that is. And how, how are these kind of untested therapies oftentimes positioned? They solve all your problems, right? They're there to solve all your problems. And you know, they, with lots of clarity that hey, this is, you know, and then also, also kind of denigrating what's been there. They didn't know how to solve. The mainstream medical people didn't know how to solve our problems. They were wrong. And you really kind of cut into that. And it's not as though there aren't issues, but you can capitalize on those. And then you can offer this untested therapy with a lot of clarity and certainty. And that can make people say, okay, great, I'm going to try that. And oftentimes it can put people in a worse off position. So instead of being on one health trajectory, they're now on one that is heading in the wrong direction. And so it's a very interesting psychological game that we're really playing here. But even having some mindfulness or awareness of it can help you counteract forces that again, oftentimes people might be really passionate and just want to help people. I don't want to position anybody that has an idea about how to be healthy that doesn't totally resonate with mainstream ideas, which I don't even know if my ideas are necessarily mainstream, but they probably align more so with the accurate depiction of what mainstream ideas are then you could end up, I think a lot of people are just like, hey, this maybe worked for me and I want to help folks. So it's not that people are nefarious, but oftentimes there are incentives in place that can kind of fuel this formula that we just talked about about, you know, don't believe them. Believe, believe us. But I think that the more you end up kind of learning, you see that the world, the world with health is less, you know, muddy than you were made out to believe. That the more you learn, it's not that it becomes less clear, it actually becomes more clear. You start to see some truths there that kind of rise to the surface and that makes your own health practice defensible. Meaning that it can withstand people coming in and saying, yeah, well, what about this? Without it kind of rattling everything that you do and shaking you off of your otherwise good health practice, you know, your otherwise good pattern. So, yeah, I mean, we should be teaching this in schools. I mean, this should be. This should be a fundamental part of just human curriculum. And if we want a healthy society, we need to have people that can adequately maintain their own health. Health care bills will go down. You know, we'll be able to benefit from modern medicine a lot better than just having it, you know, keep us alive, but be very sick. So it's a. It's a really important thing that we're doing. The thing is, we don't have to have government intervention in order for us to take part in. Now, if you have the desire, then find what you think is the best method. If I'm going to read something new on a subject, I go to what I think is the first thing I do is try to find the best source, you know, who's done the most work on it, who's at, you know, you know, really who's published a lot, who's put their ideas out there to be, you know, have them be tested. That's where I go when I don't have information on a subject and I read their work.

I think a question that's been running in the background. I feel like the ultimate question is, as we've gone through the layers of efficacy versus learning and behavior change, we've talked about optimizing a little bit towards motivation or how do we get that intrinsic fire to do the things we've promised ourselves? There's a question in the background, and it's who do we trust in the ocean of information? How does someone formulate trust? You know, someone's listening, they're feeling inspired, they want to take action. How do they know that A, they can trust a source of information, and B, what does that look like in the early stages of them taking inspired action?

Well, I think that without having a, you know, a very clear answer, look at the people that associate with them. Look at the people that. Do they declare what their method is? Do they offer all the promises in the world, or do they have a realistic perspective about health and how to help? Is it comprehensive? Does their perspective about how to be healthy kind of fit into a bigger overall framework? Which is one thing I love about ancestral health, which is part of the Paleo diet as a part of that, but it is a overall framework about how to live more naturally in the modern world. And that, to me, I think, is actually the best part about that movement. Not necessarily the diet itself, although diet's gotten a lot of popularity. So does, you know, does there. Is there a framework there that is being offered where, you know, there's a lot of answers that can be provided? So those are. Those are some things that come to mind when I think about how do. How do we know? Or is it a quick fix? And if it's a quick fix, you know, just be. Just be wary. You know, be doesn't mean that it couldn't actually be helpful. It might be, but just be cautious. When I think about what we're trying to build at human os, I think about first, I think it's really a good idea to try to clarify the problem you're trying to solve. There's several problems out there, so. But one of them is this idea that somebody who is interested in their health and wants to basically learn things so that they can be a good steward of their own health. We're always bombarded with tons of information. And if you're not an expert, and even if you are, it's hard to know what's legit, what's not. Then we have. There's novelty seeking versus kind of taking more of a deep dive. Right. And so it's easy with today to constantly be searching for what's new versus actually taking a deeper dive into what we know to be helpful. So this idea of learning for efficacy versus learning for recognition is. Let's use a bike riding analogy. See somebody riding a bike, I can recognize what that is, that person's riding a bike. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I know how to do it myself. In order for me to do it myself, I have to get on that bike and I have to then learn how to learn how to pedal. I have to learn it in a different way. I have to have deeper engagement to develop a level of fluency with the idea and also how I relate to the idea so that I can benefit from riding the bike and getting places faster than walking if I need to. You can use that analogy for really a lot of things in health. You know, we're not protected or vaccinated from information. Even if we have a lot of the right information in our head, you still have to make that leap to go from adequate understanding. So how do you get to that? How do you get to, first of all, deeper understanding? And then you have to make that leap to actually putting it into practice. Yeah, it's kind of Going from finding the right ideas, understanding them deeply, turning that into skills, and then maintaining it long term in the face of competing information.

What do you think is next for you as far as your excitement for yourself and human os? Like, what's coming down the pipe? When can people actually learn more about when they can apply this operating system for their life, for healthy living?

Yeah. Well, we are testing it now. We're launching with about 16 different courses. One on fasting, one on the Mediterranean diet, of a variety related to weight loss, one about exercise foundations. I look to have probably 100 more, maybe 50 more courses next by within a year, within 18 months. The way that I work with these is I find somebody whose work I really like published. We work on them together. I offer my framework about how to kind of communicate. We find peer reviews and advisors. So the goal is just to make it as absolutely as good as we can and then communicate it in a manner that's really fun, interesting, and going to continue to do that. The operating system will be out there that people can sign up for and benefit. And I really wanted to make it so that you didn't have to be a power user. You didn't have to use everything in order to benefit at all. You could just, you know, I want to come and get the recipes. I want to check in occasionally, do a course. I want to. There's a lot of different ways that I want people to be able to benefit if that's how they want to use the tool now. But I think of it as, you know, you sign up and this can accompany you on your journey forever. And a lot of business models, they rely on heavy engagement temporarily and then they lose you. And they may try to then reactivate you once you've gained weight back or at certain times of year. So even the way that we're thinking about how the tool helps you, there might be times where people are really heavily involved, then they aren't using it as much. But it's always there for you to benefit from. And hopefully, you know, I don't want people to need us. I want them to want us.

Right.

Like there's a little bit of need at first, but then. All right, does the tool lose its power? No, actually, I want it so that people can continually want to use it because they feel that it just makes things easier. They're always benefiting, they're always learning. They're always getting reminded perhaps of something they already know. So it's this. It's really. There's a part of it is Just like kind of an engagement piece that helps you stay engaged with your own health practice long term. So that's kind of the bigger vision. What we're gonna be bringing, what we're gonna be working on next, probably gonna be really starting it early in Q1, if not by the end of the year. And anybody who's listening that wants to sign up, please offer your feedback, tell us what else you want, how to make it better, because that's a really important piece too. Is how you like it, what you want. But yeah, I'm excited. I can't wait to use it personally.

And I know we've talked many times and I know you've been pouring your heart and soul in two plus decades worth of health studies and behavior change. Everyone already knows about Dan's plan simplifying your daily health practice. So we will link that. But as you transition into human os, I think the most powerful quote that I heard from your episodes on human OS was from that same episode with Dustin. And it really highlights what we talked about today and on the show. The quote was, our job isn't to motivate other people. It's about creating the condition in which people can motivate themselves. Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. Round two was just as fun as round one. And you know what? I have this feeling that round three is coming in 2017 because I know that people are feeling inspired from this episode, man. So thank you so much for your work.

Well, thank you so much for having me on. I'd love to come back. I love chatting with you, Josh. Anytime.

Dan Pardi, you blew my mind. Thank you so much for coming on the show. What an incredible episode. I listened to this twice myself and I suggest you listen to it a minimum of two times. There were some takeaways from today's show that I listed on my notes here, and there was about 10 takeaways. Now, I chose what I believe to be the the most powerful three. The very first one is get clear on your exact health issue and work to uncover the root of why that issue's there in the first place. Once you're clear on the route, then it's time to research and locate that trusted information you need to begin to solve the issue. And we talked so much about that in the show today. So be sure to listen again to gain even more clarity. And the last point is creating the motivation, sourcing that motivation needed to work withstand the journey. Because, my friend, you know, it will not always be easy and you will need a framework of motivation which we talked about in the self determination theory of today's show as well as don't forget, human connection is what makes us, well, human. And all the research and theories in the world won't help you if you're not open to doing the emotional work on your inner self and being real with you and with other people that you get to receive support from. BE to sure to check out Human OS Dan's new program. I actually got to sample one of the modules. He was kind enough to send one to me and I'll tell you guys, I have never seen something this powerful and this concise super trustworthy information and stems from an academic research literature that is peer reviewed. That's something you can really trust. Show notes from today are found@wellnessforce.com humanos. You're going to be inspired by some of the links and videos on that page page. So head on over to the Show Notes page right after you're done with the episode. So now there's just one last thing for you to do and that is put down the phone, turn off the player and go out and create an incredible day for yourself and the people that you care about. So until I see you again next week, I'm wishing you love and wellness.