Kind: captions
Language: en
we have a really strange
relationship with food in this country
food
changes mind
because the mind is the electricity
sparking through that flesh
it wasn't until i started to ask people
about their sleep that it just like
changed everything our sleep quality is
more important than our diet and
exercise combined
well let's be clear nobody knows what
the perfect diet is even when it comes
to fasting it's all
largely based on
rodent studies so what i can tell you
about the rodent studies which i'm very
familiar with
is that if you take a rodent and reduce
its calories by 25
for its whole life
it will live longer 30
but it'll be really miserable and
aggressive uh and that's true for us as
well i've tried calorie restriction for
about a week and i gave up i was pretty
angry but what we discovered our my
colleagues um discovered is that
if you
it's not just what you eat it's when you
eat that's important and what's been
found is that if as long as you have
that period of hunger
in a mouse so you can feed them every
other day
then they can gorge themselves as much
as they want and they do they eat about
of what a mouse
having free access to food would eat
but they
they have the same longevity benefit as
a mouse that's always been hungry and if
that's true what that means is for us is
that we can enjoy life as long as we
have that period of hunger once a day or
maybe twice a week and i believe the
only reason we age
you know we could live for a thousand
years
otherwise the only reason we age is that
our repair systems
become complacent
you mentioned that what
what is beneficial for you when you're
young come backs to bite you when you're
old what we think is that these repair
systems are very good when we're young
so the idea is it's called antagonistic
pleiotropy and i think it's right and
that is that we evolved to stay healthy
and alive and fit till we're 40
and then the forces of natural selection
decline after that because we've
essentially bred
we've often had children
but we don't need to stick around beyond
that and building a body that will last
a thousand years is pointless at that
you know so most species only live as
long as they need to to reproduce and
then a little bit more
if you're a mouse that could die within
two years they only build a body that
lasts two years if you're a whale that
has no predators you can live for a
couple of hundred years that makes more
sense
why why does the whale live for a couple
hundred years like i would say it's
pretty safe to say certainly at some
point in our past we became a pretty
clear apex predator it's not that things
couldn't take us out but i mean by and
large obviously look at how far we've
come they didn't so why would we only
live to 40 is that whales continue to
breed and be
useful in that sense
so that's really super interesting very
few people talk about this
the reason is that we were not at the
apex of the food chain until recently
but in a world where we typically would
die from starvation or from war a lot of
men didn't make it to 40 because of that
we were at the middle of the food chain
only now we we actually barely have a
chance of dying
before 70 or 80 unless we're unlucky
you know give us another 5 million years
of evolution we could evolve 200 year
life spans that's what should happen if
evolution continues
a whale has been at the apex for about
30 million years and they've been
allowed to evolve those long life spans
we are just like them we share most of
their genes they're warm
they produce milk they're conscious
they're basically us in the sea so
anyone who says we've reached our
maximum limit doesn't know what they're
talking about
talk to me about this notion of
resetting the biological clock how do we
do that what's the mechanism and
so obviously going hungry occasionally
exercise is going to help but i know
that you have a regiment that i'll
lovingly call a regimen of drugs or
precursors to things that we can take
what can we do to reset that biological
clock
well there are different levels to
resetting aging there are three levels
that we know of
the first is pretty easy to reset or to
manipulate these are the proteins that
turn
genes on and off very quickly we call
them transcription factors
and they they basically read a gene and
make a protein that's what they do
that's level one that's easy go a little
bit hungry
that'll change level two is a little bit
harder the level two is not just
changing which genes are quickly turned
on and off but actually
silencing genes for for a long time and
this is where my enzymes that we work on
the sirtuins come into play
let's go back to the pacman they clip
off acetyls of these packing proteins
you spool up the hose and it becomes
becomes locked in that that gene gets
silenced for a long time so to do that
you can exercise you can diet but you
also i think you need a little bit of
help as well what gets really
interesting and this is something
most scientists don't even know about
yet is level three the deep layer of
aging
there's actually a dna clock that tells
our bodies how old we are we i could
take your blood and read it
and i could tell you roughly when you're
going to die
what yeah we can do that what are you
looking for we're looking for chemical
groups that get added and subtracted to
our dna mole the long string in the cell
you get chemical modifications in
predictable ways as you get older
starting from conception so even in the
womb even as a kid even as a teenager
you're aging based on this clock that
goes up linearly and where you fit on
that line
it's very accurate that tells you your
biological age but how do you know when
the person's going to die is that just
based on actual straight lines is it
actuarial tables though the human
average human lifespan is 86 and is that
what you mean or is there could you see
something specific in my line that would
say
you're headed for 68 sorry
no it's not not specific but what it's
based on is machine learning based on
thousands of people's
code of methylation on the genome and
comparing that to their health and their
date of death oh [ __ ] that's so
interesting so if you were to take my
blood right now what would you look for
exactly we would read the methylation
the camp these are chemicals hydrogen
and oxygen bound to the dna chemically
physically bound
and those accumulate as you get older in
very predictable ways in fact they're so
predictable
that we can use the same clock
to measure the dog's age and a human's
age whoa
all based on methylation right okay what
causes methylation
well there are two classes of enzymes
the ones that add the methyl chemicals
and those that subtract it okay
how do i take a boatload of ones that
subtract it ah that's what we're working
on
now here's the key level two aging reset
which we can do by some of the things
that i'm doing in my life yeah probably
you are too
those aren't permanent changes you can't
just do that and expect that
take take one treatment and you go on
living for another ten years okay
because level two isn't as permanent
it's somewhat permanent than level one
but level three is truly permanent it
you could reset yourself 10 years
and then
go back and then wait another 10 years
and potentially reset the clock again if
you know how to do that
[Music]
you know a lot of us have this ball and
chain when it comes to food right we're
just
you know we eat at breakfast we eat
lunch and we work we take up so much of
our mental bandwidth that can be used
for productivity for relationships for
self-development but when i do
interviews when i interview other people
or when i'm being interviewed i like to
do it in a fasted state now
i didn't start doing that it took me a
while to get to the point where my
ketone levels get to a
point where i'm not feeling hypoglycemic
and the symptoms of like low blood sugar
affect me
but i don't really worry about
is because once you're fasted
for me personally
i don't start to get negative symptoms
in terms of sleep issues and maybe
constipation or whatever until day three
so i'm cool going to 36 hours and not
knowing am i gonna have food or not so
it's just a way to clear the cobwebs not
have to worry about meal prep on sunday
but the reason why i do it is i actually
have a tumor biomarker that's elevated
called alpha fetal protein interesting
that's why you started doing it well
that's why i'm fasting pro more on a
more prolonged basis every time tell
people why why do you think that it and
then tell us the exact protocol yeah um
give people a little bit of the
background on the potential anti-cancer
properties what you've read i'm super
interested in this so you can go as
crazy as you want well you know there's
a lot of research people talk about
fasting first of all lowering glucose
and insulin and so obviously there's
many different cancer subtypes and
cancer cells metastasize and they they
mutate and so forth but a lot of
research shows that cancer cells can
utilize glucose and insulin to thrive so
getting rid of those growth insulin i've
not heard that so the cancer cell can
actually use insulin as what a growth
factor or it's a growth factor to kind
of pivot uh their metabolism to a more
glycolytic so they're burning sugar
instead of fats and we'll get into
autophagy in a minute but insulin's
involved in kind of amplifying mtor
mechanistic target of rapamycin i know
you had peter atiya on and he talked at
length about this but this is really the
gas pedal for cellular growth
and so it's and i like to just pause
right here and let people know it's it i
describe mtor
like a light switch in your home right
it's not good or bad it's the context
that matters your light switch is great
when you want to find something in the
dark
but it can be bad if you're sleeping and
someone turns it on so that's where you
know every time we eat even if it's a
vegan meal or a animal-based meal we're
going to stimulate mtor so just wanted
to throw that out there it's not good or
bad it just is in its context but
getting back to your question about
insulin that could be the purported
mechanism through which insulin may
affect cancer growth is
through mtor activation which just kind
of fuels pro-growth pathways
yeah so getting back to it glucose
inhibition or lowering glucose down um
lowering insulin enhancing mitochondrial
function so a lot of people i'm sure
you've talked about this you know if we
envision our home being a cell
our home has different appliances right
we have the refrigerator the the stove
top the furnace uh inside each one of
our cells we have different appliances
they're called organelles so they're
little
cells within cells really and our
mitochondria play a key role in helping
us burn fat for fuel helping us think
clearly helping us move our muscles
and it seems that mitochondrial
dysfunction is
you know an upstream event leading to
various diseases from mild cognitive
impairment to blood sugar issues
and
low energy fatigue things like that but
certainly cancer as well so we got the
mitochondrial function and then for me
enhancing autophagy
so as i said
i do lab work i've been doing lab work
like you know comprehensive metabolic
panels twice a year and i started to
have this gi pain and i could not figure
out where it was coming from and it was
just like persistent so after three
months this was back in 2015.
i started to do some research on the
internet and i'm like you know maybe i
could have cancer maybe i could have
something
and i started to look and since it was
in this region i was looking for
gastrointestinal biomarkers so i
measured those
and there was this one test called alpha
fetal protein which is high in people
that have hepatitis
or hepatocellular carcinoma which is a
metastasis of the liver
so i ran it and the normal range is zero
to eight and mine was 80. whoa so
anytime you have a weird biomarker just
retest because it could just be part of
the lab so i retested it and it was 79
and then i was freaking out like dude
because i have a little girl at home so
i'm i was nervous right you're nervous
because that's indicative of having this
liver cancer exactly okay so because i
had this biomarker i started to kind of
believe that i might have cancer and
then i started like on one hand it was
great because i was more present with my
daughter enjoying the moment putting
down the phone at night things like that
but on the other side i was like
i can't have this mindset that i have
something i
and this is common in western medicine
you have autoimmune disease you have
hashimoto's so people start saying
i have ms i have this and i i think we
need to realize that
certainly our body can have
perturbations but it doesn't mean you're
always going to manifest symptoms of
that if you you can the body and the
mind and the diet and lifestyle are so
powerful
um
well let me ask you an interesting
question so i know you play in
functional medicine a lot one of the
things that i love about functional
medicine is that stop worrying about the
symptom and get to the underlying cause
do you think your elevation in that um
protein is afp yeah okay i keep
forgetting the alpha fetal protein um
afp is that
uh
is that a symptom of something else
yeah i don't think so but i was living a
lifestyle where i was commuting i was
traveling a lot i was a sales rep and i
was going to chicago going to managing
territories in canada so my circadian
rhythm was totally jacked and so it was
a if anything it was an eye opener that
and i mean i've been eating healthy for
a while i mean i got into bodybuilding
and fitness stuff when i was 14. not for
good reasons for insecurities like many
of your guests has talked about you know
but um i i was doing a lot of things
right but that's one of the things that
i was not doing my circadian rhythm was
all over the place you know always on
eastern standard time zone then flying
back and living in airplanes so it was
an aha moment that i mean maybe the
universe god was telling me you need to
change how you live your life and be
present more
move more and really honor your sleep
wake cycles because that influences our
hormones our biology i mean everything
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what if you wanted to work on focus and
cognition these things are harder to
test but when you go into the big
neuroscience journals
they speak about intermittent fasting
and the best way i can explain it is
your brain's a hybrid vehicle
it grew it evolved through through
thousands and thousands and thousands of
years of lots of food scarcity
you didn't eat all the time
and so it's got a backup mechanism
called ketones so after 16 hours
if you don't put glucose in and the
liver is done
releasing the glucose it's held onto
through glycogen reserves then it'll
start burning fat
they'll clip off those oxygens and
hydrogens and they'll make ketones out
of it
intermittent fasting can also help you
lose weight i think that's why most
people are interested in but it's the
way the brain prefers to get its fuel
source
and it's based on a diet
lessons about dieting learn through
controlling
epilepsy and seizures in kids in areas
where there's no medicine
so i was in ukraine
and
when they don't have medicine or type of
seizures these are the abnormal
electrical activity of the brain just
like an arrhythmia would be an abnormal
electrical activity of the heart
uh they would just feed them all fat
diet you could smell it in the hospitals
so something about an all-fat diet
forcing you into just using ketones now
intermittent fasting is back and forth
glucose and then ketones glucose and
then ketones but for kids if you just
get them almost nearly all ketone
as the source that goes up to the brain
through an all-fat diet
their
seizure rates
go down you know so that's proof
that food
changes mind
because the mind is the electricity
sparking through that flesh food
will change the electricity
detectable measurable
electricity in your brain
food affects mind food affects brain
with that premise
we can talk about okay mind diet will
hold off
dementia and intermittent fasting might
make you feel like you've had a cup of
coffee once you get a rhythm out it's
not going to make you smarter but it'll
bring you to your most focused to bring
you to your most attentive it's not oh
i'm intermittent fasting and now i can
do physics it's
it's not like that it's your personal
best
and then the habits you demonstrate to
your family by trying to be at your
personal best and then your kids see
that and your friends see that i think
that's how you impact generation change
is to have
capable people demonstrate hey it's not
hard and this is the best we can do for
ourselves it's really interesting
i have a very different relationship
with intermittent fasting so i
intermittent fast a lot so i'm fasting
almost 20 hours a day how does it feel
awesome
but it does it isn't additional clarity
for me so what i find is that it changes
my relationship to hunger so i'm not
thinking about food in the way that i
would be thinking about food if i'm
eating over a longer period of time
because i'm in ketosis so if you took my
blood not now probably because i just
had a big meal about three hours ago but
if you had taken my blood this morning
at like 10 o'clock
a thousand percent i was probably
posting a 1.5 ish and when i'm in that
range i feel great but i don't feel
extra
but i find it is
extraordinary
for fat loss so the reason i'm doing it
now is so i cycle throughout the year so
in the winter i worry a lot less about
carrying a bit of fat so i probably
fluctuate during the year five to seven
pounds probably and then for the summer
then i'll sharpen back up and then again
the the cycle repeats so
that i find it really effective for i
find it really effective for changing my
relationship to food so that i don't
need to eat if i were going to miss a
meal not a big deal if my only choice to
eat something bad versus to skip a meal
then i find that it's it's just a
different relationship right so here's
where i think i understand it a little
bit differently it's not like you expect
clarity when you pop into ketosis
because it's been 16 hours after you've
eaten that's just your last meal it's
just the going back and forth
over a few weeks over a few months those
months you'll have maybe more clarity
than the months before when you weren't
doing it i have a hypothesis about that
that's testing obviously we're not going
to be able to figure it out here but my
gut instinct is if you're used to a high
carbohydrate diet a thousand percent
you'd be like holy [ __ ] this is a
revolution my life is so much better i'm
clear all of that
but because i don't
almost ever have non-vegetable
carbohydrates in my diet because if i
were to cheat then i get it then i am a
little bit foggy so the delta is less
for you since you already started with a
better yeah so from a clarity
perspective this lay person so discount
the [ __ ] out of it but this lay person's
vibe is or hypothesis is is that this is
a lack of carbohydrate thing that gets
people non-vegetable-based carbohydrate
that gets people to clarity
but there's even another benefit to it
which is it will radically alter your
relationship to hunger is probably a
better way to say it than food yeah
which is pretty interesting yeah so but
your whole psychology of the the feed
forward of you know forward loop cycle
of eating and then i don't know that
what does that mean well it's just the
the fact that you get a rush when you
eat yes
you know it's just it's you're supposed
to i mean and fat tastes richer because
somehow
you know we figured out it was more
advantageous you know to have this
because it's more nutritious at least
from calorie point of view and so those
things are set inside us i mean
if it's good for us it gives us a rush
sometimes if it's bad for us it gives us
a rush and i love the complexity of that
i love that animals get high i love that
some people think that stop there it's i
totally am with you but explain to
people how animals get high well they
eat fermented food they bury stuff
underneath they they search
certain things in the environment
that are
uh you know psychoactive meaning it
changes the way they feel
and what's unique about these substances
like cannabinoids or even nicotine
that when you
as a scientist i'm reading papers and it
says
cannabinoid receptors we have named
scientific terms for cannabis inside our
body there is a nicotine receptor
nicotinic receptors so that active
agreement ingredient from tobacco i'm
not saying smoke
but just to understand that the
chemicals in plants
have perfect locks for which they serve
the keys in our bodies we we grew with
the plants
we changed with the plants we use the
plants to our advantage
and now
the the plants and the food have have
gone the other way and it's a
disadvantage to it for us and the
biggest problem i don't understand
because we're eating too much
so before food scarcity
was uh an advantage
because it kept us from intermittent it
was intermittent fasting by you know by
necessity
and that if you think about it just
conceptually it's just another
hypothesis
if during times of hunger you were less
sharp or lack of food
made you dull
rather than sharpened your wits about
where the lion was where the other where
was the berry where was the fruit where
were the shellfish in southern south
africa if it made you dull
that wouldn't be a positive thing so i
think
i think it makes intuitive sense also
that just a little bit and with all
respect i know people can't get food
throughout the world i've traveled the
world i know there's bad food everywhere
but at an intellectual level for people
trying to take it to the next level
is
is a bit of food scarcity can actually
sharpen your mind and neuroscience is
trying to understand
at the molecular level what's going on
what's swimming into the brain and which
receptors are being turned on but i
think i think it does make some
intuitive sense
you know i don't think that there's one
person
out there that doesn't know a better
food choice right you know an apple is a
smarter choice than a snickers bar there
is a giant
gap
between intention and action worked for
countless weight loss companies for
years and years and watched as people
were prescribed you know a food plan
where they
sort of just followed the food plan but
until something broke and it just it was
the same for me so i was like i really
want to understand what's happening in
people's minds and why is it that they
can stick to something for a certain
amount of time but then it ends so as i
kind of
rotated in my career away from you know
working in weight watchers and lifetime
fitness and some of these larger brands
into creating my own company and my own
philosophy
my first step was to understand
why do we do what we do because it isn't
that we don't know what the smart choice
is so i went about sort of really
looking into the brain science behind
you know why would say a woman come in
and i'd weigh her at weight watchers and
she would you know the funny thing that
happens before a woman weighs in is they
start just spewing and and almost like a
confessional they say oh i i had a
really good week until friday when i had
you know 37 points left and i ate 39
points and i felt so bad about it that i
ate 275 points and i was like wait you
ate two points over which wouldn't have
made you gain weight but the
something's happening in the brain
so
started to look into the research and it
turns out that any time that we feel
guilt or shame
about a food choice or an action it
actually activates the reward center in
the brain
meaning it makes us want to
um feed the reward center absolutely so
the one thing that you're trying craving
is what it's kicking to have the
emotional reward yeah so when we look at
the brain under an mri when the feelings
of guilt or shame which so many diet
programs right they they
create these boundaries at which once
you cross that boundary you are somehow
bad you have somehow broken a line so
this is sort of back to that woman right
she she felt like she had done something
wrong she felt guilty and shameful so
that drove her brain into the reward
center lighting up and then she goes for
whatever it was that she was trying to
avoid so a gambler is going to gamble
more as they're losing right the um the
shopaholic is going to spend more money
and shop more as they feel more guilt
and more shame over what it is that
they're doing so my entire philosophy
and process was how do i
figure out how to move people away from
these feelings of you know there's a a
specific program that if they don't
stick to it perfectly they therefore are
bad they therefore have have broken
something and it's over right because
that was the process that i found myself
going through was i would lose weight
there was a finite ending to that maybe
i reached a weight goal or i or i did
something wrong where it broke down and
so i didn't just go back to like sort of
healthy eating i went back to the most
unhealthy eating there is in the world
right binge eating and overeating and
all of those things so and i was seeing
this with so many people so i really
felt like i really wanted to start to
make people understand how their brain
is driving them and remove some of those
feelings of guilt and shame and give
them the tools and the worksheets and
the exercises that would help them to
unravel
their thought process around this and
where they picked up those ideas it's
really interesting to me and i think
this is what i found so fascinating
about target 100 the way you open the
book like first with your story which is
amazing and i definitely want to talk
about that and then
to your point like once people
understand that they've built this
unhealthy relationship with food then
they can actually get to the cause and
begin to unwind it yes and i heard you
say one time that you know i think
oftentimes people are surprised because
i i have to come to them at the diet
level because that's what they expect
that's exactly that's not where we're
going to stay yeah i thought that was so
interesting that's exactly right right
like it's so funny you know i have to
come at them with
what resonates with what they can
understand at this moment but where i
take them is so deep and so much further
than what they've ever thought about
their relationship with food and i have
sort of a tagline of like i say i'm
going to return you to a normal
relationship with food we have a really
strange
relationship with food in this country i
think we've lost our way in many ways
i think dieting and you know all of
these sort of extremes that that have
have come in and come out um you know
going into a process and sort of
slavishly or following you know the
rules that somebody else has set out
that worked for them right i always say
for my clients i say like let's pretend
we're going to a hat store right if you
were going to buy yourself a hat you'd
try on a whole bunch of hats and if they
didn't look good you'd take them off and
you would pick up the pieces that kind
of looked good about that hat and you'd
go to the next one so i'm always
encouraging people to
not turn themselves over
use these programs they're amazing
you'll learn something from doing them
but don't beat yourself up if it isn't
your long-term
plan that you're going to stick to
completely which that's where i think
this thing gets set up for people is
they do one of these things you know
they go to weight watchers they stay on
it for four weeks or so and then when
they can't sustain it they feel like a
failure and those feelings drive them to
overeat
so
unraveling that is to try to look at
this process from a whole new lens and
that's what target 100 is for me right
so i had to lead them in with i'm giving
you a parameter i'm giving you sort of a
a program to follow but if you read the
book it's based on the
image of me playing uh doing archery
with my sons and i say i want you to go
into target 100 and imagine you know
when you go out to to do archery you aim
for the bullseye right and i had never
done it before so here i am aiming i'm
hitting the house off to the left you
know i mean i'm not doing well at all
but i did hit a couple of the outer
circles and it was one of those moments
where i was like oh my gosh this is this
is how i want people to approach
their their their dieting or their
moving through a lifestyle is that they
wouldn't if they if they got near it
near the bullseye they would still get
points so that's sort of the entire
ideology behind target 100 is
you know i ask you to
kind of limit yourself to about 100
grams of carbs a day and i always say
about because if you got 93 it'd be fine
and if you did 107 you'd be fine it's
when you say like oh gosh i missed this
perfect mark so i may as well just go
and eat and drink everything off on the
face of the planet so
what drives unraveling this which is
the most important thing for people to
hear is that
we are just a bundle of habit patterns
50 of what we do in a day is simply
habit and habits are relegated to a back
portion of the brain where
honestly
we aren't even present when we're doing
them and we do that for a really
important reason right because if i had
to decide how to wash my hair every day
that would that would that would be
exhausting my decisions for later in the
day so so we have to love our habits but
if 50 of what we do in a day is habit
than 50 percent of the decisions we're
making about how we feed ourselves you
know when we do are we eating in the car
are we eating on the go are we you know
what are we how are we fueling our
bodies then 50 of that is just
kind of not we're not even present for
it and we're just being driven to these
sort of old easy patterns so we don't
have to think
as many of you know i'm all about
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so aging to me is the either quick or
slow breakdown of the gut wall
how do we know that well we can take a
look at
105 year old people around the world
you can look at their microbiome the
collection of bugs in their gut
they will have a very diverse set of
bugs they'll have you know
it takes a village this really
incredible tropical rain rainforest
and those microbiomes that collection
will be identical to a healthy 30 year
old
so what that says is that these healthy
105 year olds are healthy
because they have the microbiome of a 30
year old and it's this microbiome that
is not attacking the wall of their gut
that's actually existing
with the wall of the gut and we i talk a
lot about this crazy bug that may be the
key to longevity and it's got a great
name acromancia mucinophilia
say that three times say that once yeah
so this bug lives in a mucous layer that
uh aligns our gut
and if we're lucky and the way we're
designed we're supposed to have a layer
of mucus lining our gut before we get to
the cells
and that mucus is there to number one
trap my favorite subject lectins which
are plant proteins that are looking for
sugar molecules
and number two it's to protect the wall
of the gut
from bacteria that might do us harm
so acromancia lives in the mucous layer
and it actually eats the mucus
now here's the best part the more mucus
it eats
the more our gut cells produce mucus
and it actually increases the mucous
layer
and
the book is actually lots of tricks on
how to make this guy happy because the
thicker our mucus the younger we are
in fact fun fact
metformin we now know works
by increasing the amount of acromancia
in our gut not by some magical mystical
thing happening in our body
in fact interestingly about 25 percent
of people when they start metformin get
diarrhea
and
it's actually because the gut microbiome
changes dramatically on on metformin and
one of the reasons is that acromoncia
becomes predominant
interesting so at a cellular level
what's happening with metformin
something that simply triggers the body
to produce
mucus in general is it is it changing
the microbiome you called it a
rainforest earlier is it changing the
makeup of that rainforest or is it just
actually compelling the body to create
more mucus
no i think it's actually changing it's
selecting out for acromancia now how
does it do that because there's actually
kind of a shag carpeting on the lining
of our gut
so
plants have roots going into the ground
we know the roots actually absorb
nutrients because of the soil microbiome
all the bacteria all the fungi
actually deliver the nutrients into the
roots of the plant
well
we have a root system and that root
system is this shag carpet
that makes the the lining of our gut a
tennis court okay so the reason it's so
big in surface area is it loops around
itself with little one cell thick
protrusions called microvilli
okay okay these are our roots they
literally are our roots
at the bottom of these microvilli or
what are called crips
at the bottom of the grips there is a
pocket of
bacteria that are essential
and they're down there
in storage in fact fun fact we now know
the appendix is not useless it's one of
these storage systems to repopulate our
gut if you lose your appendix you're
screwed for that part of your story
system but down at the bottom of these
crips are these little collection of
bacteria and at the bottom of these
crypts are are stem cells that actually
repopulate these microvilli
so
what happens is if we damage this lining
and boy do we damage the snow lining
swallow and ibuprofen it's like
swallowing a hand grenade
take some food with roundup in it
roundup will destroy the lining of your
gut it's really good stuff
roundup in itself will destroy your
bacterial population all right really
fast because i think this is important
and for some reason um
even though i've had you on the show
before i read read the book like the way
that you've started talking about some
of the places that you're going to find
also known as glyphosate in the system
that basically they're part of why
they're doing it was originally created
as a um or patented as a antibiotic
which that was already shocking and then
you said they use it as a way to be able
to dry the crops out so they can harvest
them on a specific day very good but
then you said they don't no one wipes
them off and so it ends up in cheerios
and other things and i was like what
like i thought
if i was washing my vegetables i was
going to be fine so this was a little
bit startling to me yeah you know you
know a little off subject but they've
looked at recently a study of 35 oat
products in the united states and all of
them had glyphosate
in them some of them are very high
levels some of our breakfast cereals
most of our granolas most of our granola
bars
most california wines including a couple
of organic wines have glyphosate in them
because the the fields are
sprayed the weeds are sprayed with
glyphosate between the vines to kill the
weeds research at mit has shown that not
only does glyphosate
kill bacteria
because bacteria use the same
reproductive pathway that plants use
it's the shikimate pathway humans don't
use the shikha mate pathway and so
monsanto
when they invented it said hey
uh this kills plants but don't worry it
doesn't kill humans because we don't use
the same pathway for life
and everybody says oh that's great uh
you know this is a miracle
uh what they didn't tell anybody is the
bacteria used the same shikimate pathway
and again they patented this as an
antibiotic they didn't patent it as an
herbicide
salt has a couple problems so it's not
bad so sodium chloride is an unnecessary
nutrient without which you die you have
to have enough sodium in your diet it
happens to be that you get all the
sodium you need from a large volumes of
these whole natural foods just like you
get enough carbohydrate you don't have
to add sugar and then you get enough
essential fatty acids including
decosaxonic acid etc that you form from
your dha are you formed from your
omega-3 by eating whole plant foods but
the problem with added salt is that it
stimulates what's called passive
overeating so if you just give an animal
it's filled till it feels satiated say
rice whatever it'll eat a certain amount
then it feels satiated you salt it
they'll eat significantly more people
say yeah taste better you're eating more
because you like it better but you're
eating more because the salt the
chemical salt the sodium chloride in
higher concentration stimulates dopamine
in the brain results in increased intake
it affects satiety and so
the problem for people trying to lose
weight if they're eating salted foods
usually too the salted foods are things
like flour products that are turned into
breads or crackers or cookies that are
also hyper concentrated in calories but
the salt will allow them to eat more
think about bread if you take the salt
out of bread it's and and you take out
the sugar it's called matzah well you
know it's they have to eat it once a
year and on passover and that's it
because that's the only time you'll talk
nobody's running out buying big boxes
and lots as a routine because it's flour
and water it doesn't taste good because
any highly fractionated food needs salt
oil and sugar or combinations in order
to increase flavor that's what chefs are
is people that take hyper-concentrated
foods and add salt oil and sugar to it
and deliver it to the palate so it
stimulates the brain in the most intense
way possible we're saying get away from
all that let's um your addict analogy i
think is very apt and i want people to
burn that into their soul that there are
some people that can get away with
having some of this stuff and it doesn't
become a huge problem though they would
almost certainly be better off from a
longevity perspective from a feel-good
perspective if they went to a totally
plant-based sos diet
but so for someone like me i don't
struggle with my weight i don't have an
addictive personality i can fast if i
want just because i think it's better
for me
but i
when i think about going to a full
plant-based diet sort of
forgetting about a pure sos diet for a
second but one of the things that i
already eat that i know that i would eat
is an avocado like literally the avocado
mash it
um nothing else added to it i take a raw
baby carrot and then i put salt on the
avocado it is
[ __ ] delicious is it still bad for me
though if i am
i'm not overweight i don't have a
problem overeating it um it at that
point does salt still have such a
problem that i should be cutting it out
on my diet or am i only cutting it out
to stop me from passive overeating
well i think it's not just passive
overeating because salt also is a very
powerful preservative which is why it's
used you know throughout history
before we had refrigeration and stuff
that helped food not go bad so people to
get sick from eating spoiled meats and
other foods
and so it is an effective preservative
but when you think about the five pounds
of bacteria that live in your gut it may
not be too good an idea to put too much
of a preservative into that gut because
it will alter the microflora part of the
reason people on meat-based diets have
completely different microflora than
plant-based diets may in part be because
of the higher salt intake that's
oftentimes associated with it now let's
be clear you know vegan diets can be
total crap
soda pop potato chips and other generic
terms for highly processed fractionated
foods can all be vegan
you know oreo cookies are vegan that
doesn't make them healthy it just makes
them not have animal food in it so i'm
not arguing uh that that uh vegan foods
can't be crappy foods they certainly can
i get in trouble speaking at national
vegan conferences explaining to people
that as as challenging as meat products
can be the vegan processed food products
may be worse and that they'd be better
off eating the meat and that just gets
them all upset because they're being
driven from you know moral ethical and
spiritual viewpoints and saving the
planet and all that stuff i'm not
arguing that i'm just arguing i just
want patients to live a long and healthy
life and not be debilitated and we know
that too much animal protein
is definitely a detriment so people that
are eating large amounts of animal
protein have higher problems with kidney
disease and cardiovascular disease
there's definitely
at some point there's too much that
needs to be reduced even for people
they're going to advocate animal foods
as a whole natural food now you might
ask me can people eat meat and still
maintain optimum weight absolutely
because meat isn't a highly fractionated
pleasure trap food it's a whole natural
the problem with meat is it's very
concentrated if you eat too much but you
can have problems but it's not the same
thing for example as dairy products
which are a highly processed animal food
that has all the challenges of animal
foods but now it has the problems of the
salt like try eating your cheese without
salt and see what it tastes like it's
the salt that people really like about
it absolutely so that's why this gets
very clouded and confusing
is that because it's not just
meat or it's not just
plants it's it's really a question of
how processed foods are and how do we
get away from having so much processed
foods and frankly meat itself without
salt you know just boil some meat and
chew on it a bit and see if that's how
appealing it is to you know what i'm
saying
[Music]
this particular topic
is and me being a nutritionist like i
was all like food matters food first
food is the most important thing
but
in my practice and seeing people coming
in that
you know we've got these folks over here
you know 80 of the time are able to
reverse type 2 diabetes heart disease
get off their lisinoprils and all this
different stuff and then we've got this
category of people who just like
literally sometimes would ironically
kind of keep me up at night like what is
wrong like i'm doing all these things
right are they lying to me and then
it wasn't until i started to ask people
about their sleep that it just like it
changed everything and this was about
six years ago
and so
then and here's the key
i can't just tell people they need to
sleep more
you know this like people don't want to
change
that much like we want change but we
want to be a little bit right and so i
found clinically proven strategies that
are super easy to implement almost
things that can happen on automatic to
help them improve their sleep quality
right and once we did that it's like the
floodgates would open for people you
know they've been struggling for
sometimes you know 15 20 years with
their weight finally the weight comes
off you know and seeing people
struggling with heart disease or high
cholesterol you know the so-called bad
cholesterol
and seeing those numbers finally get
regulated once we got their sleep
optimized
and i knew that this was incredibly
important part of the conversation that
was left out and as we'll talk about i
know now that our sleep quality is more
important than our diet and exercise
combined and what it does for our health
and also literally our physical
appearance
fascinating stuff how much more fat you
lose when you get optimal sleep it's
it's insane that's a bold statement so
walk me through what are some of the um
the just
core benefits that i'm gonna get
assuming that i'm sleeping suboptimally
like
why is that a problem since that's
probably one of the most celebrated like
things like when you get a little sleep
people like champion you normally i'd
sleep five to six hours a night with no
alarm okay i haven't set an alarm in 15
years so that's just that was my cycle
i go to bed early very consistently my
diet is on point my exercise is on point
and so i'd wake up feeling awesome
and so i thought this is cash money but
because i don't set an alarm that my
sleep cycle will change and right now
i'm getting like seven to nine hours out
of nowhere and super consistently and i
literally have no idea why i'm warmer
now
so i used to be freezing cold at all
times
and then at the same time that my and i
don't know correlated positive no idea
um
i've started being warmer while i sleep
and then during the day so what are like
the core components of sleep was
something bad happening to me or less
than optimal when i was only getting six
hours even though i felt good um any
correlation between the
heat and the extra sleep there's there's
for there's a lot to unpack there number
one uh what's so interesting is that you
you were doing something exceptionally
right as far as what the research shows
with improving your sleep which is
you're going to bed kind of consistently
a little bit earlier than other folks
might and so what we call what we call
this is this anabolic window or what we
call money time sleep
and this is generally between the hours
of 10 and 2 because it's more lined up
with your natural melatonin secretion so
if you go to sleep during those times
you actually spend more time in the
deepest most anabolic stages of sleep
and you tend to produce more human
growth hormone than other folks so you
were already winning with that this is
why you have a tendency to feel better
even if you're getting less sleep
because
i this isn't called sleep more right
it's sleep smarter
and there are many people who sleep you
know eight to nine hours and they wake
up feeling like
straight ups you know hot garbage you
know what i'm saying and they're just
wondering why it's because it's the
quality of sleep and when i say quality
of sleep what does that mean let's break
that down so your sleep is regulated by
changes in your in your brain waves it's
really fascinating stuff and we still
don't know
really what sleep is trying to define
sleep is like trying to define
um you know when forced gump is like
life is like a box of chocolates sleep
is like pretending to be dead we don't
really know right but we do know the
changes that happen in the brain we
cycle from kind of a normal waking state
with with gamma beta
we're probably in beta right now we move
to alpha theta delta is where the deep
anabolic dreamless sleep takes place and
we need all of them
and there's a certain percentage we
spend in each that helps to rejuvenate
our mind and bodies
and if you optimize certain things
you'll do it more efficiently one of
those gear shifts
like if you think about your body like
this kind of manual transmission is
melatonin like people hear about
melatonin as a sleep hormone it just
helps your body to efficiently go
through your sleep cycles and if your
melatonin is suppressed by various
things you know i'll share a couple
then you're not going through those
efficiently and you can wake up feeling
like a pinata after the party the next
day even though you're spending all this
time on the mattress
so that's number one
number two there's this interesting
process called thermoregulation there's
a natural drop in your core body
temperature at night to help facilitate
sleep for all of us if things are
running properly but what was
fascinating and i shared a study about
this is that
they tested insomniacs and everyone in
this particular clinical study all had
too high body temperature at night it
would not go down
and so what they did was they fit them
with these thermosuits
right that lowers their skin temperature
not even their core temperature just one
degree
and virtually eliminated all the
symptoms of insomnia whoa ambient can't
do that all right
and it's as simple as paying attention
to how your body temperature influences
your sleep and so with your body
temperature changing like that it's kind
of feeling more of an insulation
as a result of having more sleep there's
a ton of different things that could be
correlated there so i'm not going to say
that the sleep is a causative factor but
it's really interesting how your body
does change in a course of sleep there's
a natural rise in your core body
temperature as the day goes
uh as i'm sorry as the night goes on
that helps to kind of wake you up
um so what i did want to share though
when i said that kind of bold statement
in the beginning
when we're talking about
how sleep influences your body
composition i think everybody needs to
know this there was a
this study really blew my mind and this
was done at the university of chicago
and they took people
and they put them on a calorie
restricted diet kind of