EFR 734: Why Families are Sicker and Fatter Than Ever and How to Change Your Home Environment to Live Longer, Lose Weight, and Boost Happiness with Shawn Stevenson

0:00:01 - Speaker 1 Mr Stevenson, welcome back to the show. Round three baby.

0:00:05 - Speaker 2 I love it, man, three times the charm.

0:00:08 - Speaker 1 I got a. I got to say a couple things which I feel like I say kind of every time we sit down on the show here and I just give so much credit to Not you but you following your drive, your passion for making a better life for yourself and your family and sharing that information. Man, I People know my story, but I'll say it again when I discovered this platform, it was the model health show 2015 and I couldn't get enough. It was just knowledge, knowledge, knowledge. I would take that I was working in a clinic as well as a clinical health coach and I would go to my patients, I would have leading information, I would have the latest authors, I would have the latest science or just a reminder of the shit that we all know works. It's so basic that we just kind of forget about, and I would just be so much better at my job.

And then, you know, I'll never forget you were at a like a live podcast event in 2017 back in DC, where I was living, and I was already kind of mulling over my head at the time what if I did this more? What if I did my own thing? What if I started my own coaching business? What if I really tried to make the podcast a thing?

And I asked you this question kind of paraphrasing a little bit here, but Because it wasn't that long ago, at that time, where you had done the same thing, you had a clinic, you had a practice, you were coaching people, you were doing all this stuff in person and then you transitioned out and I asked you how do you know when it's time to move on, how do you know when it's time to take that leap? And I'll never forget this answer, man. You just kind of pause and you looked at me and you said you already know and Do that moment January 2017, until December 2017. I built my exit strategy. I doubled down, working 40, 50, 60 hours just on my thing, left that job the end of the year and now here we are, six, seven years later.

0:02:04 - Speaker 2 Man, it's powerful man powerful and just to see what you've accomplished as well in that time span, it's special really, is.

0:02:12 - Speaker 1 It's crazy. It's crazy, but so I just want to give you thanks and praise and gratitude for all the things and following your Purpose, your purpose and your passion, and just as a reminder how important it is for us to do the same for our own lives, but look at the trail of success, of breadcrumbs that we can leave for others.

0:02:31 - Speaker 2 Absolutely. That's what it's all about. Man Really like, that's what creates fulfillment. You know, because we could be operating.

You know, I definitely have that tendency, because of my childhood experience and the environment I grew up in, to be more self-centered, to be more isolated, to retract. And Once I got well, you know, started feeling better physically. I had no idea the impact that it would have on my mind, right, and just being able to perceive life differently. And also, you know, when you're in an environment where it's Volatile and risky, mm-hmm, you know it's, it's an adaptation to be like that. For survival, but for thriving and for really being able to enjoy life, you're going to have to open yourself up, you're gonna have to trust, you're going to have to serve and give. That's what, that's what tribe really is about. Oh yeah, it's being able to contribute and to serve. There's something about human psychology, whether it's a small level or a big level, it's a need that we have, we. We derive a deep sense of purpose when we're able to give and to be of service to others. And it's like this super powers, like a superpower and a secret that shouldn't be a secret. Yeah, you know, but the way that things are framed right now. I just saw a stat that it's getting close to somewhere. Around 60% of Americans today, in an emergency, would struggle or not be able to get their hands on a thousand dollars.

Hmm, all right, so we're talking about the majority of our society having that sense of Deprivation and lack and scarcity. And so what do you think our tendencies are going to be ours? Is it going to be to open ourselves up? Is it going to be to to be expansive? You know, when we're under stress, when we are in a survival state, we tend to retract, we tend to, we tend to hoard right, we tend to hang on to the little bit that we got and we tend to play it safe. And you know just which. We're alluding to being able to experience real fulfillment and growth. Hmm, you're going to do something different. You're gonna risk things. You know it takes strategic risk, of course, intelligent risk, but you're gonna stretch yourself, and it's difficult to stretch yourself when we're in an environment that is Encouraging us or even pushing us to be retracted.

0:04:50 - Speaker 1 That makes sense expansion in the face of uncertainty Seems ludicrous for a lot of people. Just to choose expansion, yeah. But you know what I'm here to tell you? When you make that scarier choice of Expansion, when you're facing uncertain times, that is, that's it. That's a secret. That's that's how you grow, that's how you shed what doesn't serve you, that's how you step into what you're capable of. And again, like I said, you know you leave that example behind you.

0:05:19 - Speaker 2 I think, if you're kind of doing it right, yeah, yeah, that's you know it's a Especially under those types of circumstances, when you're able to do that, it's really a launching pad. It's kind of like oh yeah, exponential growth. It's not just like a step-by-step growth, like you're really pushing yourself to a different level very, very quickly, and sometimes that's gonna involve you Learning to live again in a sense like learning to live truly with this different mindset, Like it's kind of being like a twice-borner right.

0:05:50 - Speaker 1 So it's learning who you are again, or maybe for the first time.

0:05:52 - Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly yes, and there's an adjustment period, for sure. But you know, when I made this transformation, I just saw this stat, maybe two days ago as well. I don't know how this landed on my life. I'm not purposely seeking out bad news, but I just saw the murder capitals, like the cities with the highest murder rates, and St Louis was at the top.

Again, that's where I'm from and I lost my big brother. It wasn't my blood brother, but I lost my big brother when I was like Seven years old and you know, as a family friend, he looked like us. You know, my mom kind of you know took him in. We babysit his son and, and you know so I've seen this even from my early days like people losing their life, just being in the environment that I'm in and again making this transformation in these conditions. I was living in Ferguson at the time and this is not, this is not seemingly ideal circumstances To have a revolution of health and empowerment, right, because I didn't see it in my environment at all. I didn't know what that was like. You know, I step out my door. It's convenience stores, it's going to rest right.

Check cash in places you know, and it's just like I didn't know what organic was, I didn't know what yoga was, I didn't know, like this stuff didn't exist to me. Matter of fact, there wasn't a gym in my area, really no, no, no not even just like a no 24 hour.

0:07:17 - Speaker 1 No, no, no.

0:07:20 - Speaker 2 However, if I hop on the highway and maybe hit Florissant because it was Ferguson floor sin we shared a school district of Florissant was large, like the nicer part of the town, you know, and there was a gold club fitness there. It wasn't a golds there yet, but even that club finish was kind of holding a wall sweaty. The walls was sweat, you know.

0:07:38 - Speaker 1 But if they did, have that.

0:07:39 - Speaker 2 But I was attending my university at the time. So, because I was a student, that access to the gym and facilities, that's what my, that's what my blessing was under those circumstances and so, but I wasn't using it until again, I decided to take control of my own health. And so, being in that environment and making those choices, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't matter where you come from, it doesn't matter your circumstances, you can change, you can create the life that you want to create. And no one said this was gonna be easy. That's the thing. But here's the.

The beautiful part about all of it is that all of its hard, the struggle and the poor health and the poverty, that's hard growth, health and Achieving some level of success, that's hard as well. You get to pick your heart. You get to pick, you get to choose what difficulty you're going to, the pet to follow. But here's the thing Truly, one of them is gonna lead to a lot more fulfillment. That's the thing. And you know which one of those it is? Oh, we know. And what we're here to do is to empower those who are in those. I wish I had somebody to speak this truth into me, to speak life into me to let me know that this was possible, and so that's what we're here to do and, at the time, podcast hornet thing, which is so cool. I've been in this field for over 20 years. That's crazy. So.

0:09:02 - Speaker 1 I'm a grandfather in the podcasting, because it's a little over six now and they're like damn, I'm like no, no, no, no, you don't know yeah grand granddad, granddaddy, I'm sorry, that's edit that out. I did that, no, no.

0:09:18 - Speaker 2 So, you know, just understanding like there were podcasts, want to think, but we did have. Obviously, the internet was popping and I got Again just by making the choice to study some things, to find out about health. There was like some online summits and things like that. And you know, there were great teachers online who are my friends actually messaging with him this morning, dr Mark Hyman. I came across some of his work early on and there's this physician who was saying you can reverse type 2 diabetes. And I'm just like that's what. Like I've got all these family members who have diabetes and that's just their story they're diabetic, you can not have this. And so, and he being being that, I was a student and also Somebody who was really deep into research, but again, I was looking through a certain lens when I was doing it.

Right now, I'm using those tools to be able to analyze information, analyze data and to affirm like, oh, wait a minute, like why hasn't anybody taught me this? I have University nutritional science class, university biology class, but we're not learning how this is applicable to the real world Yo, why is this being gatekeeper?

We're talking about it, you know, damn I don't know for a frog cell or something like you know. I mean like we're studying cells, but not really. It's not like in an empowering way where we understand like, oh I, there are these Orgonells, there's this mitochondria, they're these protein cell signals, and like, like, I can Change these things in myself, like us too. Yeah, and so that was what was the game changer for me Was being able to blend this, and it reminds me that quote from, I believe, is Mark Twain, who said that we should never let School get in the way of our education. Oh, do I love that, right? Yeah, truly. And so being able to. Yes, I'm fulfilling my university education requirements, but my real education Were the things that I was passionate about and being able to seek out not just teachers, but what's created. What's so special about this time is that you can learn from the very best people in the world in their respective fields.

0:11:21 - Speaker 1 For free sometimes, or very limited barriers entry.

0:11:25 - Speaker 2 all they got to do is push play, yeah you know it's so powerful, miss so powerful, and so you know being able to learn from Mark was was such a gift, and you know he helped contribute to even you know my latest book as well and it's like how is that even possible? I?

was in Ferguson, missouri you know what I mean. Like eating a box of macaroni cheese for a meal and you know my kids are sleeping on an air mattress to like. This is my friend and colleague and we've done so many things together. Now he's just one of. You know hundreds of stories that I have like that and that's the thing that surprised me most about, you know, working in this field the past 20 years is that my relationships are the most incredible, most valuable part of my life. Coming from that person who was so Isolated to being somebody who is like my relationships are the most valuable thing in my life.

0:12:14 - Speaker 1 It's it's really special and you know I'm so glad you brought that up because actually I'm gonna have. Of course, we're here to talk about the new eats mother cookbook, but just as kind of a preface for everybody tuning in listening right now, the first time you're on the show back in 2019, episode 159 again, I'll link all this for everybody was on just that how to improve every relationship in your life, and that was so Necessary for me to expand on because, honestly, you were one of the first people, if not the first, that drove home the necessity of relationships in terms of your health and how Truly one serves the other, if not maybe even more relationships. And then again in 2020, in episode 415, when eats mother the book came out, and in between all that, of course, we had sleep smarter. That book put me on my path, john I swear man when I made sleep my number one priority no bullshit. Every other thing in my health, in my life, in my energy, my mood, my creativity, just Scott rocket, it skyrocketed, man.

And so so much of what you've done has just put me where I am here today, but just Really at the front really of a lot of these concepts that really are not that crazy.

And again we're gonna get into this when we look at relationships to food, the relationships we have with people that we're enjoying food, with what is going on there, what is literally spilling over into this experience of cooking, of eating, and the reciprocity of what our bodies are soaking up because of the quality of that relationship and even getting better sleep From on top of all that man. So so much to unpack for everybody to kind of go back to. But in preparation for today, I Was reviewing my notes, doing all the things like a good podcaster does, but ultimately I decided like no, no, I gotta get my work in where my workout in first. So I know that taking care of my body helps my mind and I'm curious, maybe, in your preparation for today or in general, as someone who is so health-conscious and Researches and creates a lot of health and wellness content, how do you honor your mind through taking care of your body, man?

0:14:31 - Speaker 2 that's incredible. That's incredible. Listen, today this is so special man. I was training outside of my house with my youngest son today, you know. So we just did there's the relationship thing again.

0:14:43 - Speaker 1 I know, man Listen, that's what.

0:14:44 - Speaker 2 That's why this is so special. You know he's out on summer vacation and you know I was just taking opportunity and also just understand there's levels to this right. So a lot of times, if we're Wanting to shift something in our lives, we try to use our, our willpower right. We try to push through, we try to, you know, and that's cool like humans, we do have this faculty we dub willpower. But willpower becomes less necessary or almost unnecessary when the environment Is changed, when the culture is such that you simply do these things because it's just what you do. Yeah, right, yeah and so at is at the heart of it.

It's about shifting culture and that's really what I focused on for the East Martyr family cookbook was how do we change the culture, change the environment to then automatically change behavior? So I was, you really leveraging social science? And so for me, yeah, I have it baked in. I understand that, unfortunately, the body and mind have been separated in in in conventional science, conventional medicine, recently, unfortunately. But that's taking. It's it's taking a turn. Now is changing, it's coming kind of back to where it originated, to think that they can be separated.

0:15:57 - Speaker 1 It's.

0:15:57 - Speaker 2 It's not it's not even a thing, ignorance, absolutely. But we got into this. You know we can go back to the Renee Descartes and you know we can get into this really mechanistic view of science in the human body, right gears and levers and like this thing is systems operating independently and collectively exactly exactly Now, learning from the very best people in the world, right?

so, the top cell biologists, the top neuroscientists, and, you know, all my friends and colleagues like Dr Daniel Aiman, dr Caroline leaf, dr Lisa Moscone and understanding that, first and foremost, the the mind is controlling everything. Your thoughts create chemistry. Mind not brain, right, they're different operation. Yeah, yeah, because those two things are, fortunately, have become synonymous as well. Our brain is really, it's really a channeling instrument and obviously there is a lot of automated things that it can do sure, but it's difficult to locate, like where is the thought in a brain or where is this memory located?

We, we can talk about a brain region like the hippocampus. Yes, absolutely. However, your thoughts are creating your brain, all right, and you can literally change your thoughts, essentially, externally, of what's happening in your brain's normal firing right. So, for example, if we're having a habitual negative thought or automatic negative thought, as my friend Daniel Aiman would say, we can scratch that record up, we can choose something other than and it doesn't necessarily mean we're like leaning to a new brain region where something, magically, is like stored away to do the thing. Our mind is Encompassing a field, it's, it's it, and this is again not getting into something. It's very super, like metaphysical. I'm talking about real hardcore science here.

0:17:38 - Speaker 1 If we even talk about just neurons, talking to other neurons or not Accessing memories in order to engage them once again?

0:17:45 - Speaker 2 That's the mechanistic piece of right, but the energy field itself, if we let me shift gears to make this a little bit more Accessible or visceral for people. Okay, the human heart, okay, we all have one. If you listen into this and shout out to the ghosts that might be listening, by the way, but I respect you if you respect you, if you have a heart. And, oh, my goodness, this is leading me to another thing I just talked about about heart. Oh, we're gonna come. Transploitation, just a moment. Heart transplantation. Oh, yeah, I got something to say about this. So the human heart is effectively teaming with neurotransmitters? Hmm, so the human brain? We associate our neurotransmitters with brain activity and our central nervous system, peripheral nervous system. But the human heart is Loaded with neurotransmitters, so much so that a lot of scientists dub this entity called the heart brain, and it's also kicking off a lot of electricity and electromagnetic fields.

0:18:43 - Speaker 1 We got like a three-foot field, if I'm not mistaken, of the eight, eight, eight.

0:18:48 - Speaker 2 It's up to eight feet from our bodies. It's called a tube Taurus.

0:18:51 - Speaker 1 Yeah, that's like I can feel you without ever feeling you.

0:18:53 - Speaker 2 This is again we, because, unfortunately or maybe fortunately because it might freak us out humans. We see a certain spectrum of life. We see a certain spectrum of light, right, right, there's bio photons make up everything, but we only see a certain spectrum. So my animals see more into, like infrared or ultraviolet or like different differences on this long, huge spectrum.

0:19:13 - Speaker 1 Yeah, go look up reptiles and how they view the world. It's wild.

0:19:16 - Speaker 2 Yeah, that's some predator shit exactly, and you know it's understanding that we see a certain reality and there's a lot that we can't see, and so now, with Advancements in science and technology, we're able to see this field expanded from the human heart against, called a tube Taurus. This, okay, this tube, like structure that's able. The folks at Heart Math have done really, really great research into this and and I so cool like years ago maybe it's like 12 years ago I started like just even sending them donations. Right is a way of like tithing to places that I was getting my education from. I like that, and so I like set up a auto and I didn't have much money Again like I'm. I moved to fluorescent now so I'm not in Ferguson like in the hood hood now making moves like you know what I mean.

And so now, but I'm like sending out like $20 a month to the, to their research and their Institute. So again, anyways, that's Heart Math Institute. The Institute of Noetic Sciences as well is how I found out about Heart Math. So, anyways, with this being understood, if we think about a tangible example, if you think about an EKG, right, you think about heart monitors, right when you're in the hospital or you see it on the movies.

0:20:31 - Speaker 1 Oh, you can even do it on the.

0:20:32 - Speaker 2 Apple watch right it's picking up the electric energy that your heart is kicking off, like it is a truly powerful electrical organ, like your brain. Same thing in your brain. It's existing in a field. There's a field that your brain is emitting, that your heart is emitting, and Again, this is expanding, like our body isn't just in a side of this. Yeah, peace, this, this physical thing, it's expansive. Now this brings us to and I didn't know we're gonna talk about this as well, but actually can we pause here? I'm gonna pull the study up. He's got references.

0:21:04 - Speaker 1 I wasn't good, I wasn't gonna talk about this. We're getting a heart math exclusive. Hey, this is nuts man. I'm already blown episodes is. I didn't know it was up to eight feet. That's crazy, okay. Okay, when we're kind of smart folder, sean has in his phone of like fun facts to blow your mind.

0:21:25 - Speaker 2 Most of the stuff I don't even need to look at man, but I was not planning on thinking about this or talking about this at all. Okay, so we can jump back in here. We are All right. So this study this was published in a prestigious medical journal. This is the journal medical hypotheses, and this was published in 2020 journal of medical hypotheses. Yes, and this was published in February of 2020.

The title of the study is Personality changes following heart transplantation the role of cellular memory. And so what the researchers are consolidating is the decades-long database of people having these Transplantations of different organs and seeing behavior changes, seeing personality alterations, seeing a Diversity of like somebody maybe has a certain mental health condition that goes away, or they gain one, or they have different taste preferences that show up, they start to have memories that are not their own Right. So all these different phenomenas and they detail all these things that just get kind of packed away as like that's kind of weird science. It's scary and weird, strange science, but essentially the the researchers are uncovering that number one. There's an epigenetic memory, there's a DNA memory, there's an RNA memory and there's a protein memory Holy shit, that is contained within that organ and essentially that protein memory they're like little antennas on our cells that are picking up a frequency of broadcast, and what it's alluding to is that that broadcast is you, it's picking up you. So that person's heart in that heart transplant their protein antennas is picking up that person's frequency. Wow, right. So it's like this is getting into some really interesting strange places.

I know what I'm looking up after this, but this is speaking to how, again, we are not just this, and if we understand these things, there were so much more. The universe itself is so much more expansive. But what can imprison us is being so short-sighted, feeling like this feeling of isolation, feeling like we are not capable or that we're alone, right, when in reality you're connected to all of it. You're connected to everything in the universe. As a matter of fact, everything that the universe is is getting expressed through you. Absolutely. It's like a unique expression of that. And what an opportunity, what an opportunity, what a special time, and so I know it took a detour and understanding like this story is so much bigger. But to circle everything back to understanding again that mind-body connection and how I intentionally started the day today with my son in training Because, unlike some of my colleagues that feel like the mind is the total control.

I feel like it's going both ways.

Oh, yeah, absolutely so. I feel it, and this goes back to my friend Tony Robbins, which is really gangsta to be able to say. My friend Tony Robbins and him saying that emotion is created by motion, right, so being able to change your physical state, moving your body, is going to have these upstream effects on your psychology and your mind, right, and what he's really saying is that it makes it easier to tune into and choose more positive thoughts from your mind. When your body is feeling good, when you're suffering, when you're in pain, when you're in state of low energy, it's more difficult to grab on to those more positive, affirmative thoughts. It's not impossible, right, right, it makes it harder. And so this is a gift that I give myself, and I haven't always been good about doing that and working for so many years and running a clinic working with a lot of women, I've seen this is very important. The majority of the time, it's more difficult for women to really take control of their healthcare because of the oh, I can speak to that professionally as well.

You see it, yeah, yeah, yeah, you see it just the nature of self-sacrifice and doing for others, and so we might have the revelation and my wife might have the revelation that I got to put myself first. Oh man, the words are one thing, the actions are another. So what does that actually look like? And I'm on a mission now to help people to reframe and restructure their perception of things. Simple changes in their day and in their environment to make that automatic, Because in reality, we're often coming to our families depleted, we're giving so much, we're emptying our cup and then, at the end of the day, we're left with, we're pulling from something that is almost gone.

Essentially, you scrape in the bottom of the barrel, exactly. And so what we want to do is proactively find ways to fill our cup, to start the day, to start the day, fill up our energy reserve so that we could serve at a higher level, so that we could show up, so that we're more resilient, so that we're more adaptable, because when we're scraping from the bottom of the barrel, it's some nasty stuff down there you know what I'm saying and this could oftentimes lead to dysfunction, disease, burnout and all these different things. But here's the thing as a parent, we're still going to figure it out, we're still going to find a way. We're still. If we have nothing left, we're going to dig deeper, we dig ourselves into a hole to get it done for our child. Now again, it sounds, it sounds altruistic, it sounds heroic, but unfortunately so many of these kids are losing their parents prematurely. I just lost my dad, just two weeks ago I was at his funeral.

He was in an adult living facility, an adult daycare, basically for the last 15 years because of drugs and alcohol, 15 years Damaging his brain, wow and to see that experience and that transformation that took place in his life. And, of course, we all, we want our parents, we want our mom, we want our dad, but there's certain things we want from them. It might be that affirmation, it might be to say that I'm proud of you. Whatever the case might be, but one of the things that we don't want to do oftentimes is to lose them prematurely, and so that's what I'm advocating for, because I don't want my kids to be without me right now, especially when they need me so much. They need a role model, they need somebody to be an example for them, to be a template, to be a resource for whatever they might need To show them how to build their own tools when it comes to taking care of this vessel.

What I'm learning is that parenting? There isn't an expiration date on that. You know what I mean, and so we can show up better and have more longevity for our children, for our families, when we put a priority on our own health and wellness.

0:28:12 - Speaker 1 You know, to kind of add a little bit on that, I think even call it maybe the opposite here but sometimes in the through line here is relationships, the relationship we have with our family members and the relationship we have with the significant other. You know, in my case the relationship with my father was so rock solid and so important when I did lose him prematurely. It was because of that loss and that relationship that I used that Now. It took me a while to kind of go through that, but it was because of that and straight up fear and I'm curious to kind of get your feedback on this leveraging fear of getting sick Now.

My father passed away from a terminal illness, nothing that I can't get, I've been tested for it. It's not hereditary or contagious, but the fear of my life ending prematurely and leaving my family in the fear of not being able to move my body and to just wither away drove me in many, many ways to take care of my body in a lot of the ways that I do now. I might be fighting a fool's battle or running a fool's errand, but you know what damn it, if I got for a bit ever get to that place, I'll know without a doubt that I've been taking care of myself.

0:29:28 - Speaker 2 You know you're not, you're stacking conditions you know and you know, even with that story, it's still going to depend on our perception, because for somebody else in that same position to lose their father, they can attach to that and use that as permission to stay stagnant, like I lost my dad. You know I can't, and you know, for me and again, I get to see this stuff firsthand and to see my siblings right, replicating behaviors that put my father in that condition why did I choose other than, yeah, right, it's still going to boil down to choice, but that choice is so much more difficult and distant when you don't feel well. Because I was following right along when I was living in, you know, in Ferguson, I was incredibly overweight and I was diagnosed with a degenerative condition, arthritic condition in my spine and my bones at just 20 years old, all right, so I was just literally whittling away and deteriorating, and the majority of my family members today are obese, all right, there has been change in my family, of course, like you know, they're too. Oh, my goodness. I mean, I got stories for days, I'm sure. I'm sure, some incredible stories.

However, what's the most difficult aspect of it is the environment? Right, because we get addicted. We get addicted Even if it's not good for us if we found comfort in it. If we're used to something, comfort can be a killer. Strangely, Sit down again man. Comfort can be a killer. And even if a behavior is hurting us, like we know, it's hurting us if it's what we're used to, like our brains. That's another thing about the difference between the mind and the brain. The brain is always looking for automation. It's always laying down more myelin and it's helping those pathways. This, you know what's said, is neurons that fire together, wire together, wire together, and it's making it faster. So it's just automated, automating behavior.

0:31:27 - Speaker 1 This is familiar, this is safe, this is less work, less energy, especially when it comes to the brain. Exactly, exactly.

0:31:32 - Speaker 2 That energy aspect. Ooh, that's such a good one. And now you add on top of that okay, now you want to have a positive thought, Now you want to change. You want to change.

You want to do something different than drinking every day, or you know your smoking habit, or eating all this processed food. You want to change. You want to what you want to get healthy. All of this has been laid down in the brain that's automating these things, and so when we step in with a new decision but that's, that's the thing Let me not even say decision. Decision is cutting the core. We talked about this before. Right, yeah, the Latin rate the. Latin root of the word decision. They mean from and cardier meaning to cut cutting away the possibility of anything else.

but this thing we make a real decision. It's done. Great memory, by the way.

0:32:20 - Speaker 1 As soon as you just said that I'm having a flashback. Absolutely yeah, we talked about this, yeah.

0:32:24 - Speaker 2 Little matrix moment, little, you know inception, and so, just understanding that you know being able to change our thinking, it's going to require us to change our circumstances, our environment, to make that more habitual. Okay, so what does this look like? And this is where it really leans into how we can do this for ourselves and our families. First, I think we need to know what we're up against. Actually, okay, and here in the United States I'm just going to throw out a few stats who is our enemy?

0:32:54 - Speaker 1 right now. Paint the picture. Enemy number one right now. Oh my God, on the home front that's hard to pick one enemy.

0:33:00 - Speaker 2 But here you know what. You know what I'm going to do. I'm going to mention a couple of Capitalism. Isn't the problem, let's put that caveat it's capitalism at the cost of human lives, Okay, it's leveraging. It's not just capitalism, Capitalism to take advantage of suffering. That's what we have with our pharmaceutical model today. That's what we have with our process food model today. That's what we're dealing with. And so these are a couple of the enemies and it just helps just psychologically to know like we're all collectively coming together to battle something. But there's so many good people who are working in those industries. You know, like some of my, some people that listen to my show. You know, hit me up. They work at Johnson and Johnson or Fies or whatever. They're. Just like Sean, I know you're right, but I just don't like when you talk about this thing.

0:33:51 - Speaker 1 Maybe they're the ones that blew up the Pfizer plant. You heard about that.

0:33:54 - Speaker 2 No, I don't know about this.

0:33:56 - Speaker 1 One of the five. I'm pretty sure it's Pfizer, I think, literally yesterday or a couple of days ago, one of their biggest pharmaceutical plants that creates a lot of mostly, if I'm not mistaken, they're narcotic and opioid drugs and like pain relievers and things like that Mysteriously random explosion. It has nothing to do with me and I haven't heard any. That's some casualist.

0:34:15 - Speaker 2 Thank God, but sounds suspicious. All my former military guys out there. A great mission, Just kidding.

0:34:22 - Speaker 1 But yeah, I mean, it's just wild when you think about something like that.

0:34:25 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and so just to paraphrase Pfizer, for example, again, there are great people there and they're trying to make a difference, but the entity itself, the business itself, they profit from suffering and not curing issues. Not curing disease, but managing symptoms is the definition, so that you're a repeat customer and having a product that you just use once is like. Even recently there's been a thing you think you need once, but you got to keep on getting the thing and in reality it's really factory forming humans, right? Oh sure, if you. And this again, there's so much unpacking. I'm just going to give a couple of things. Pfizer was convicted of the largest criminal fine by the Department of Justice in history, and they were convicted of racketeering charges. So we're talking about things that are reserved for, like, the mafia and organized crime syndicates. Correct me if I'm wrong racketeering implies intention.

0:35:26 - Speaker 1 Right yeah, exactly.

0:35:28 - Speaker 2 Knowledge, not they knew what they were doing. They've broken so many different laws repeatedly, so many felonies, and also so many people have died on their own. So many people have died on their watch as well. A lot of people are dying from their products and this is not hard to find and also being Testing drugs illegally on Nigerian children and the lawsuits from that, and the list goes on and on. So many different crimes in different countries as well, and you'll find a company like Johnson Johnson, for example, that was using sluss funds and offshore accounts to try to hide their bribing of different controllers of foreign countries.

0:36:04 - Speaker 1 Johnson Johnson a family company. Right, a family company. That's their tagline.

0:36:08 - Speaker 2 And unfortunately, again, I don't want this to be the case and I don't want to villainize them, but the entity itself is so unethical. Right, they're breaking all of these laws, but ultimately you're not going to have a person who's at fault, and so they're just going to be able to. If I did any of that stuff for example, let's talk about Merck, and I could do this with just about any drug company, by the way, and also my reference for this is the person who was involved in the litigation. Okay, all right, all right, Dr John Abramson. When it comes to Pfizer and that whole DOJ Department of Justice stuff, like I know the guy who is in the courtroom, all right, so this is in hearsay and again, these convictions are something that truly happened. And so, when I was dealing with my issues with my spine, there were a couple of drugs available. There was Celebrex Mm-hmm. That was one of the hottest drugs at the time, and hold on pause, what the fuck is the name of that other drug? Well, Celebrex is gone now too, right?

0:37:10 - Speaker 1 Yeah, Celebrex is gone.

0:37:11 - Speaker 2 But it was Vioxx. Goddamn it, okay. Okay, I was like visor, visor, visor, okay. So Celebrex was one of the primary hot drugs. There's a little horn shit there, okay, right? So Celebrex was one of the hottest drugs at the time and also at the time, synonymously, there was Vioxx. These are both drugs that are targeting inflammation. These are helped to relieve pain, and I was in a lot of pain. I was having a sciatic nerve pain Every time I stood up. It was terrible and fortunately, or unfortunately, the physician I was working with prescribed me celibrex, and he might've saved my life, because Vioxx ended up killing 40,000 Americans confirmed, and if anybody could just go to Dr Google, 40,000 Americans lost their lives directly from using Vioxx.

0:38:00 - Speaker 1 It would have been one of those two drugs basically prescribed.

0:38:02 - Speaker 2 So, you had a 50-50 shot of being one of that stat and also the marketing behind Vioxx was so robust. You know this was another one of those blockbuster drugs, potential billion dollar asset and so. But here's the most unfortunate part about again they knew that this risk was going on in the trials, but they fudged documentation, they hid the risk and they proceeded to market anyways. And also the FDA was supposed to be watching over this stuff. Unfortunately, even at that time there's largely funded by drug companies. About 50% of the FDA scientific review budget is from drug companies. 50%, yeah, and up to 75%, I'm sorry, 50% of their overall budget is from drug companies. Up to 75% of their scientific review budget is from drug companies. Right, and this was a loophole created, with the FDA partnering with drug companies in an effort to get under the guise of getting more drugs approved to save American lives.

So let the drug companies pay you, let the drug companies pay the FDA, give you more resources, give you more assets so you can review more drugs. But with that piece, and plus this kind of devolution that was really imminent in that collaboration, nine of the 10 last directors of the FDA the top seed of the FDA have either come from a drug company or they left there and gone to a drug company. I knew it was strong, I didn't know. It was nine out of 10. Nine out of 10, all right. So it's a revolving door and that's the top place, and of course they're gonna be taking their insider knowledge with them to the drug company. It's just they're human, but at the same time that's just the top office.

There's been that revolving door with many different employees, with drug companies and the FDA, and these are the type of things that in the United States I hate to use the word should must be outlawed. They're outright, they're beyond unethical, because this is supposed to be the watchdog protecting American citizens and American health. Has our best interest at heart, right? The EJS Center for Ethics at Harvard University recently published some data affirming that nearly 200,000 Americans die each year from pharmaceutical drugs.

0:40:18 - Speaker 1 Just across the board you take a pharmaceutical drug, 200k plus yeah so that's a lot that we're talking about.

0:40:25 - Speaker 2 A couple hundred thousand people that's the population of my hometown For them to be able to again. I'm not saying this was like Forest Park Community College. This is Harvard right. Shout out to Forest Park, no disrespect. Okay, this was St Louis. You know, hometown. We're putting them on the map now. Man, there's a lot of hustlers there, you know. But they're trying to get educated, you know. But here's the thing because of the way that even deaths are recorded, it is difficult for researchers to actually get the real numbers when these events occur.

0:40:57 - Speaker 1 Well, that was all the fuckery with the C word the last couple years.

0:41:00 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's very difficult because it's not necessarily an easy box to check that a pharmaceutical drug or a drug reaction caused this injury or this death. And, by the way, that's just I shouldn't say just, but those are the deaths. We're not talking about the couple million injuries that occur from pharmaceutical drugs. That, again, new diseases, complications I mean, do you know how hard it is to reacquire your? Oh my, I mean it can destroy somebody's life If they're injured from a drug. It's so difficult to sue a drug company I'm not gonna say it's impossible. They have the most powerful legal teams on planet Earth, no doubt. Yeah, right and so, and there are all of these stipulations that protect them and not our citizens. And so we have that entity that we're battling against. And I just shared a couple of things, and some of this stuff is like it's pretty terrible. The other piece of that, the FDA, food and Drug Administration. Food is the first part, right? So collectively they're supposed to be regulating this stuff. Food is making us sick and then we take the drugs and just like everybody's profiting.

And according to, this was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, jama, and this was in 2018. They did a meta-analysis. They're just printing the data, the number one cause of our epidemics, our primary chronic diseases, is poor diet. That's their assessment. Poor diet, leading cause of death, slightly edging out things like smoking, for example. Like we know, it's on the package. People still do it, but the education around processed food actually killing people is just simply not there. And so what is it about processed foods that's causing the issue?

0:42:48 - Speaker 1 And not even ultra processed foods. I'm seeing more ultra than just processed. So we leveled up and not a good way in that category.

0:42:56 - Speaker 2 Humans have been processing foods for a minute, as long as we have documentation and anthropological records. I've got a really good friend who has a degree in anthropology. He went to the same school as me at the University of Missouri, st Louis, and his name's Prince E and he's like really popping out here, but he's a big part of his mission. He's educating about health as well and he's looking through that lens of like, what were humans doing hundreds of thousands of years ago? And so we could take something like tomatoes and process it into spaghetti sauce or aeronair sauce. You could still tell that that was a tomato that was crushed and some stuff added. The same thing with olive oil, right, cold pressing. By the way, shout out to extra virgin olive oil. This is cold processing the olives, usually a stone pressing and at low temperatures. Then they bottle it in dark glass. That's key Because they're protecting that oil, because it is sensitive to light.

Not just even heat. It's sensitive to light. That can right oxidation and also it can essentially make that oil rancid and so that's gonna set off all these pro-inflammatory events in your body, right, these kind of reactive oxygen species, when you consume that shit. And that's what we see with products like quote vegetable oil, right, canola oil, corn oil. These things are processed at extremely high heats that immediately this oil is highly oxidized and rancid and just torn to pieces, torn to shreds the structure of it. Not only are they doing that, but also they're adding all these deodorizers and chemical solvents and bleaching agents and washing agents to try to create it. Because if you see canola oil, actually when it's first getting, processed.

0:44:46 - Speaker 1 It looks disgust.

0:44:47 - Speaker 2 It looks like this mud, this mucky muddy substance and, by the way, I'm not saying to go YouTube how canola oil is made. I mean, I definitely am later.

0:44:57 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean it's very eye-opening.

0:45:00 - Speaker 2 So, anyways, that's ultra-processed versus processed right. Many different benefits to be extracted from something like olive oil, for example. Researchers at Auburn recently published some data and they found that extra virgin oleocanthal rich the antioxidant rich extra virgin olive oil is one of the few things ever discovered that can help to heal the blood-brain barrier for humans right, so help to reduce inflammation in the brain neuro inflammation and researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine published some data recently affirming that neuro inflammation is one of the leading causes of excess body fat gain and insulin resistance.

0:45:43 - Speaker 1 Really what the insulin resistance? And.

0:45:44 - Speaker 2 But there's another part of that, and insulin resistance and excess body fat leads to more neuro inflammation.

0:45:51 - Speaker 1 So it's just feeding each other. Yes, quite literally in a negative way.

0:45:55 - Speaker 2 This is the definition of a vicious circle. Oh shit, Shout out to Dane Cook. I think he did a special called Vicious.

0:46:00 - Speaker 1 Circle.

0:46:01 - Speaker 2 Vicious cycle.

Vicious up that is, but this is the definition of what a vicious circle truly is. And, like you, can't break that pattern. We're trying so hard to take control of our health and, to you know, a big mission Millions of people right now in America, tens of millions, are on diets. They're trying to lose weight. They're trying, but if we don't understand, like, what are the mechanisms controlling my metabolic health, controlling my body fat distribution?

Your brain is a primary organ in this conversation. Again, we already understood the mind-brain connection, so I'm not. We want to be aware that those two things are not synonymous, but we're integrating both of them in this conversation because your brain houses your hypothalamus, again, automated largely. Your hypothalamus is kind of like an internal thermostat that's determining, in combination with your pituitary and your thyroid, what your metabolic rate is, how many calories are you burning just sitting there? And also this was really fascinating Researchers at Yale. They published some data affirming that your brain, based on its perception and its connection and communication with your gut, your brain can tell your gut to down-regulate or up-regulate the absorption of calories from the food that you're eating. So you can be absorbing more calories from your food based on the communication between your gut and your brain or you can be absorbing less and same thing with nutrients all across the board. Calories are just one aspect that we've put a label on in nutrition, but all of it, whether it's magnesium, whether it's vitamin.

A. Whatever the case might be, our bodies are intelligent at storing things right, and so now here's where it gets really crazy. Is that? What if that part of the brain is inflamed Specifically because the research that I mentioned earlier from the researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in that vicious circle it wasn't just neuro-inflammation overall in the brain, it was hypothalamic inflammation. It's spilling out of the brain. Now, so that specific part of the brain that's regulating your metabolic rate, your body temperature, your sleep and wake cycles, like it's like a master gland, that thing signaling everybody, every system, it's a problem yeah yeah, all right, it's hurting.

Now, with that said, how would we even know that that's an issue for us? Most of us don't. Almost none of us know this. We're not being educated about this and also, the brain is very protective, unless you have the technology to get in there and look at the brain, which is rare. So many people go to see their physician for brain related conditions and nobody's actually looking at the brain, right? So somebody might be struggling with a mental health condition, right? So something that is attributed to brain function and we're saying you have a chemical imbalance, for example right.

0:48:50 - Speaker 1 Do you think those chemicals fucking come from?

0:48:53 - Speaker 2 Are we doing a blood test? Are we doing a hormone panel? Are we actually? If you have a chemical imbalance and this has to do with your neurotransmitters, like serotonin, for example, are you finding a way to actually measure this, because that's very difficult, by the way. No, they're not doing that. They're doing this based on a conversation. Right, this is part of the problem and this is what we're changing now, because the reality is, even the serotonin model of the serotonin theory of depression has been disproven. It's been almost 20 years Now. Just recently, in the last year or two more scientists are basically analyzing that old data and republishing saying, hey, the serotonin model, all of these SSRIs, these serotonin selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, this is based on really faulty science and this is the reason why most people don't get well. Some people do find resolution when they take an SSRI. And my good friend, dr Christopher Palmer, again out of Harvard yeah, he was on the show recently. Yeah, associate professor psychiatry, he's top level guy. He shared with me some data and I went and looked at the study. It blew my mind Brain energy theory is crazy.

They tracked all of these people who were diagnosed with depression and this is a longitudinal study, so they tracked them over time and they found that 90% of the people treated with conventional methods for their depression 90% of these people did not have a resolution of their depression. It only helped 10% of people. And that's what's not being told, like when they're working with their physician or their psychiatrist. They're not saying that this is 90% likely not to work. We're gonna do this shit anyways. If that's informed consent, it's lacking informed consent. And also, not to mention all of the side effects, the related side effects.

What it becomes is a game of throwing these medication-tipped darts at your brain. Let me see what and this is the thing a lot of times, something works for a moment. That's what they found. About 30% of people had some resolution temporarily. And here's the thing if you look at the placebo-controlled trials and understanding the role of the placebo across the board and again, this is another little fun fact everybody should know when we have a placebo-controlled trial, randomized placebo-controlled trial, that's a gold standard in our system today.

0:51:17 - Speaker 1 Meaning both parties don't know what they're getting either getting the medication or the placebo administering or the people receiving and the people receiving.

0:51:24 - Speaker 2 Exactly. And the placebo is inert. There's no therapeutic benefit to it, there's nothing. And what they find overall in clinical trials is that placebos are about 33% effective in clinical trials. Right, a fake drug, fake treatment, fake surgeries all right, mm-hmm. Especially, it's around 80% effective in trials for depression and mental health conditions. People want to get better.

0:51:51 - Speaker 1 So bad your point. Like we talked about earlier, they believe they're getting help, that's. You can't make that shit up.

0:52:01 - Speaker 2 It's powerful. That's going back to what we initially started with the power of the human mind, we're creating chemistry. Every single thought that we have creates chemistry in our bodies, and so just that feeling of being acknowledged, that feeling of a respected authority on health to tell you that this is gonna help you, that has such a weight. We're placebo-ing ourselves. That's the thing and I shared this in my earlier book, in Eat Smarter one of these studies done by researchers at Stanford, aaliyah Crumb and her team, and they were using the skin prick test, where they would create, basically, this kind of histamine reaction where they would have an allergic rash breakout.

On the subject, love that for them. And then, right. And then they would give them a treatment, a cream, but the cream was completely inert, it had no therapeutic benefit, but like lotion, but there was a physician who would inform them that, okay, this is an agonist or an antagonist, this is something that's gonna make your rash worse or make it better. And they gave different people, different messages, right? And so, within five to 10 minutes, the people who thought they were getting an anti-histamine cream that would make the rash go away, it started to go away. There was no therapeutic benefit, but their mind right the same thing with the agonist cream, where this is gonna make your rash worse. Their rash got worse. Now the degree at which it changed and how quickly it changed it depended upon how much belief the patient had in the physician. Damn, how much they thought that the physician was intelligent and logical.

0:53:43 - Speaker 1 Had their best interests at heart.

0:53:44 - Speaker 2 Yes.

0:53:45 - Speaker 1 Straightforward honest.

0:53:46 - Speaker 2 So all of these different practicing medicine Subconscious qualities we don't even realize unless they're analyzed afterwards. Right, so for them to be able to say, like, okay, when they were looking at the data, what was the big factor here? What was the biggest factor in how much their rash changed? It was based primarily, the biggest factor was how much they believed or had faith in the physician. But even that here's the thing, even as I say that, it's still your choice. You are the one choosing and the power is in you. What the hell? Yeah, the placebo. You can placebo yourself. And if we understood this, that, how powerful our psychology is. I mean, this is a game changer, right? So Everything changes after that. With all this said, just to put a bow on this, the role of the placebo is remarkable. But also there's the no-cebo effect, which is giving somebody a negative injection like, for example, that thing is gonna get worse.

How often in our world today are we being told by people that we have in this kind of perception of authority that things are gonna be bad? Mm-hmm, right, you're gonna die, this thing's gonna happen. Right, we got this thing over here, this financial crisis, we've got this health crisis. We've got all of these different things. Where's the empowerment? Right, because when we're in fear, we're much more. We're gonna be shifting the primary places that we're thinking from right, and so we're going to be much more apt to be controllable, to be influenced, for our own good, for our own safety. Now here's where we shift this conversation completely, because we wanna be aware that these things are happening. I didn't want this to be a pity party about Pfizer or about Monsanto. This is where we understand what we're dealing with and now we choose other than Now. We start to invest in things that are health affirmative. We understand that that's existing, because what can happen when people, especially people that listen to this show we can get so caught up in this fight against those entities?

Yes yeah, instead of all right, let's create a culture of incredible health in our families under our own roof. Just within that one location Like this could become masterful at my own personal health, despite what's going on out here, despite all of this influence that these entities have and you know why? Why it's so powerful to change. That is because every single person who does that is taking away from their profits, is taking away from their bottom line. Absolutely, it's shifting, absolutely it's creating getting closer to this tipping point. And I started this whole thing off by saying I was gonna share some statistics, but we got a few. We got a few. Yeah, I'm gonna rattle these off really quickly and then we're gonna get to solutions. I'll pass it back to you. We'll get to solutions.

So the CDC published their data for this past year and, according to the CDC, 60% of American adults now have at least one chronic disease, over half 60%. So the majority of Americans have at least one disease. 40% have two or more. That's knocking on the door of half of our society of two or more chronic diseases. This is incredibly abnormal. This has never happened before in human history. And to identify what some of these are, somewhere around 250 million Americans now are overweight or obese and we're knocking at the door. Last published data was almost 43% of Americans were clinically obese.

0:57:31 - Speaker 1 And Not just overweight, not just carrying that extra five pounds, but clinically obese. That's what 40 pounds, 60 pounds.

0:57:38 - Speaker 2 So this based on BMI.

0:57:40 - Speaker 1 And that can even with using BMI.

0:57:41 - Speaker 2 We can get into like well, what if you're NFL running back?

0:57:45 - Speaker 1 I've been overweight by BMI. We're not talking about that.

0:57:47 - Speaker 2 Right? Well, you know what we're talking about. We're talking about a true state of disease and, in addition to that, about 130 million Americans and I know you're gonna be, you're gonna talk to Dr Casey Means, another really good friend and colleague have diabetes or pre-diabetes. 130 million of our citizens, it's about a third of our population.

0:58:09 - Speaker 1 It's been crazy and the spike in type two now is astronomical. It used to be, I think, in the single digits just 20 years ago maybe. Now it's like double, triple majority.

0:58:20 - Speaker 2 You know what I could do, man. There was a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

0:58:23 - Speaker 1 It was a new drinking game. Every time Sean does a journal shot up, but it's brutal.

0:58:26 - Speaker 2 So listen, I'm saying we got the data and they looked at the last. Should I pause?

0:58:31 - Speaker 1 Ah, excuse me, I mean it's Wednesday. Wednesday is always landscaping day. He passes through in a second. Sometimes we get lucky and we get a. This is one homeless guy that likes to practice his vocal skills. Yeah, he posts up in the alley once a while. I think Might be good. Ok, yeah, ok.

0:59:00 - Speaker 2 All right. The title of the study is the Last 200 Years in Diabetes, and what the researchers uncovered was that, just in the last 30 years alone, rates of type 2 diabetes in the United States have quadrupled, quadrupled, quadrupled, all right. Not just double, not triple quadrupled.

0:59:21 - Speaker 1 And this is type 2, everybody. This is not the one that you're born with or just kind of happens out of the gate. This is lifestyle, this is nutrition, this is sedentary. This is all the things that we have dominion over changing.

0:59:36 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it used to be called adult onset diabetes, but because so many children and adolescents started developing it just in the last decade or two, the name was changed Juvenile right, juvenile diabetes. That's type 1 diabetes, ok, excuse me. So even with that, type 1 diabetes has gone up substantially as well, and this has to do with the beta cells in the pancreas. So the beta cells are making insulin and the beta cells are dysfunctional. They're not making.

There's so many different ways that this could come about, but we also have sound data now on what can create that kind of malfunction or genetic alteration and make a condition like that more prevalent. And there are wonderful people out here who are in this category of quote influencers who are living with type 1 diabetes, who've largely, like they've been able to reduce the amount of insulin that they're taking by really getting on top of their nutrition and their lifestyle practices. One of these guys is like incredibly fit. He's like one of these really great athletes and fitness influencers type 1 diabetic and again, he's living a really great, fulfilled life, a healthy life. But he has this, what would be seemingly a disadvantage that he's turned in his favor and also using that as a platform to educate and support other people. Yeah, and so just another couple of quick stats.

1:01:05 - Speaker 1 He's making his comeback.

1:01:08 - Speaker 2 I mean, we're professionals, all right.

1:01:13 - Speaker 1 I will say it normally does a pretty good job in here, cutting out a lot of stuff, but still appreciate you, of course. That's why I love podcasting with other podcasters. They know, they know the post-production woes. How much grass is in that alleyway? What's going on? Is there a yard like that? It's the leaf blower. Oh, there he goes. I thought he was like oh, we whacking, he blow on the dirt, this dirt pile is going to look better over here.

1:01:46 - Speaker 2 You know, with all of this advanced technology, I know that it can make that leaf blower sound more soothing.

1:01:51 - Speaker 1 I've heard electric ones that are damn near I don't know about side ones.

1:01:55 - Speaker 2 I'm sure it could play Mariah Carey you know what I mean. You know what I mean, yeah.

1:02:00 - Speaker 1 We got AI. That can you know what I'm saying? Like the leaf blow it on bad stuff. Can we at least get an auto tune on that?

1:02:06 - Speaker 2 You know, probably be like a.

1:02:07 - Speaker 1 T-Pain package or something yeah. We could get an auto tune on that. That's not far off.

1:02:17 - Speaker 2 Good use of technology. Man, All right OK.

1:02:22 - Speaker 1 Let's give it a shot, yeah.

1:02:24 - Speaker 2 All right, ok, so I was giving some stats. Ok, another couple of stats there it is that new is going closer, let's see.

1:02:41 - Speaker 1 Is that a? Oh, it's a window. Got to block that. Yeah, probably hear a little bit more. The only thing is this is like a lock there. Oh shit, really. Yeah, I thought the whole thing was a brick, ok, yeah. Yeah, I remember it was the same thing sometimes at home. If I had to record, wednesday was the same day that the local groundskeeper would come and just like come to the backyard and the alleyway and just I can't, hey, I mean, everybody's got to do their thing, yeah.

1:03:16 - Speaker 2 Of course it's doing their job. That's why you know I was recording in between, because we were recording Santa Monica at a studio where it was moved here. But then everything shut down. I was recording in my house and it was that. That like I was like I'm fucking dying.

1:03:32 - Speaker 1 It was after a certain amount of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I called my wife in the middle of the show.

1:03:37 - Speaker 2 I'm like we got to get a place. Yeah, I mean it's probably like and up. You know, we put it up on the left floor Smart, smart, damn.

1:03:51 - Speaker 1 I remember one time like I had to reschedule somebody at home and it was because of all this noise and stuff. And then I was walking home and I shit you not, you can't make this up the corner on my street was just three giant city worker trucks, jackhammers. They were redoing the whole pavement, some like water. There was water everywhere at jackhammer, loose asphalt on the corner next to my house and I'm just like. I literally took a picture, sent it to my guest. I was like no bullshit, it was like the second or third reschedule. I was like guys, I can't, I can't make this up. I'm sorry, here's proof of me almost falling in the hole right now.

But the woes. You remember who the guest was? No, I had just moved to West Hollywood. No, I'm pretty sure it was another podcaster. So it was just there was like no problem, no problem, super accommodating. But I was like, come on, I was walking back from the gym. I was like you got to be kidding me. After a second reschedule, I feel some kind of especially if it's on me like I reschedule and another reschedule. If it has to happen again, I'm just like yo, you're going to break up with me and that's OK.

1:05:01 - Speaker 2 I understand.

1:05:03 - Speaker 1 All right, I think Sounds more subtle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's in the background.

1:05:06 - Speaker 2 He got on OK. So a couple of other quick stats. Here in the United States, about 60% of our citizens my guy, All right, you know what I'm going to do on Wednesdays.

1:05:19 - Speaker 1 I'm going to put by this guy lunch. Please take lunch break from one to three.

1:05:25 - Speaker 2 I'm saying I would imagine that they would be trying to be done earlier too. Oh well, it is still kind of midday.

1:05:32 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, they come early in my yeah, my guy rolls for like 10.30, 11. That's my cue to like all right, it's time to go to the studio, Like, if you're here, I got to go.

1:05:50 - Speaker 2 So who's back?

1:05:52 - Speaker 1 Ghostbuster oh so Josephine is brother, joel, filmmakers, actors, and they they did a oh, you tell him yeah. So we did a group of concept for a show called Ghostbusters South Side, basically a new spin on the franchise for the state's soft-dough senses. So I'm hard on our knees, are trying to make it in the Ghostbusters industry. So they start off with nothing and they're like their way up to become. You know who was like today. What are like? It was crazy. We had a hell of a ride, we went all the way through.

1:06:25 - Speaker 2 It looked good, it was good and we did PR for the afterlife movies, so we are filming screenings for the best.

1:06:33 - Speaker 1 Mm.

1:06:34 - Speaker 2 Wow, we did tours all South Los Angeles. Is the afterlife, the one with Paul Rudd, yeah.

1:06:38 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and we also got it was like on the news in Wisconsin, new Zealand, it was great there. It was. In Canada it was great there, that's great, it was great, it was a great ride. And then I had to ride the passaway in this graph, the whole city, oh damn. And so we were like we've been doing great, yeah, yeah.

1:07:03 - Speaker 2 So you know it's learning lesson, man, you know.

1:07:06 - Speaker 1 I was thinking about you guys. When I was in New York in July, we walked by the firehouse where they filmed Ghostbusters and there was this. I don't know if it was like the anniversary or something, but they had block after block shut down and it was thousands of Ghostbuster guys and girls like in their costumes in their cars and reenactments and all that shit that's so iconic.

1:07:27 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I didn't even know there was that new thing. Yeah, I love you. See, I'm like the one with Paul Rudd, you know what I'm saying. Like yeah, I love it, man, I love it. And then, once I got in Mercy's World, I couldn't stop. That's the greatest concept of all time. Yeah, you know, it's such a great story. Yeah, there's so many great stories like yours, where the thing hits this, you know, and something else, you know, it's just like the keep moving forward piece, you know.

1:07:57 - Speaker 1 I think on the same trip Steven Kotler was here and he was sitting right there and we're talking it was like halfway through and all of a sudden he just goes. Is that a fucking flamethrower?

1:08:07 - Speaker 2 Looking at this, I think he got a little scared for a second.

1:08:11 - Speaker 1 I mean he's a badass guy, but he was just like what am I walking into?

1:08:15 - Speaker 2 It's a pro time pack man Chill out.

1:08:22 - Speaker 1 It was a trip. All right, man, here we go, then we come back here A couple of other quick stats.

1:08:29 - Speaker 2 About 60% of American adults have some degree of heart disease. That's measurable now.

So again, this is the leading cause of death in the United States substantially and according to the NIH, today depression is the number one cause of disability in the United States. It's really a worldwide epidemic and if you're curious, like, what are other causes of disability and missed work besides depression? Again, depression is the number one Infectious diseases and this has been for years. This is just recently, but have we been paying attention to the fact that infectious diseases have not gone anywhere? As a matter of fact, you can see proof that things have gotten substantially worse. Really great data that was accumulated on that front where researchers put together this paper and this was in the 90s. Looking at like we thought we had a breakthrough, like better living through chemistry and science that we can eradicate infectious diseases, but the researchers found that it had gone up about 58%. Come on, that's a good place to stop. You get the full treatment today, man.

1:09:34 - Speaker 1 You get the full treatment. Yeah, we tracked down the drug rep outside. He's getting the full treatment today, okay.

1:09:46 - Speaker 2 Okay, so let's see what I just say was the last thing I said.

1:09:49 - Speaker 1 It was about hygiene infectious diseases. Okay, got it. I made a comment about hygiene, all right.

1:09:56 - Speaker 2 And so there's this narrative that we believe that we're getting healthier right, Our lifespan is expanding, and that was true for many years prior. But another really important thing for people to realize is that we are the first generation in recorded human history that's not going to outlive our predecessors.

1:10:11 - Speaker 1 I've heard you talk about this before and I like I can't believe it.

1:10:15 - Speaker 2 Yeah, that trend of lifespan growing has reversed recently. It's a paradox. And it's a paradox because with our level of advancement on paper, seemingly advancement technology and access to drugs and access to food but you know there's a difference between food and fake food you would think that this would continue to expand, but unfortunately, again it's reversed. And but now again, this is where I pass it back to you and we shift on solutions.

1:10:45 - Speaker 1 I mean, I've got a million and one different ways that I want to. I want to go with this and you've got so much value coming out in this book and this work. It's hard to pick. It's like pick your battle, pick your poison, kind of thing.

But when I think about maybe the majority of listeners out there or at least in my audience, people that were educated or we are choosing to further our education through platforms like this, we're empowering our lives, our choices, for our own betterment, but also because we care about the people to the left and right of us. You know, living a life ever, for it is not just about us, it's empowering other people along the way and if we really want that for ourselves, we have to be mindful. I believe we have to be mindful of those people in our lives. Community relationships is everything man. So I would love to kind of bring it there right. So we're there, maybe we're our families on board, or we're just trying to set the example, we're trying to be the model, so maybe they can kind of make some choices of their own. We're there, we're cooking, we're laughing, we're making some healthier snack options, a whole smorgasbord, whatever the thing is.

I know what we're actually using and cooking on is a part of this book as well, and I think that's important because, not to nitpick, you know we're making a choice. Right, like Chase, come on, man, I just decided to have better food and better relationship with food and incorporate the relationships I have in life with the food. Now you're telling me, like the cookware, the pots, the pans, maybe even the heat, like can you kind of peel the curtain back there for us, not to discourage us, but to just right Good and Perfluoro-Octanoic acid, p-f-o-a's.

1:12:34 - Speaker 2 This is one of the chemicals that was recently banned and outlawed, that was contained in Teflon Outlawed, outlawed, outlawed. It's banned and you could still find it in the majority of people when they test their blood In humans. In humans, it's one of these under this category of what's known as today, these forever chemicals. Right, and so what is the issue here? Because, okay, it's a forever chemical. So what does this mean? It makes its way into human bodies. Why was it banned? Well, according to well, first of all, we've got infertility issues, we've got cancer issues, but this was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and they found that these P-F-O-A's are strong kidney cancer Causative agent. Not just, like it might, causes kidney cancer, like this in humans causes kidney cancer.

And what the researchers found was that it depended on the degree of exposure. The longer duration that you were eating and consuming food from Teflon, right From this entity that was normalized in our population, your risk of renal cancer continues to increase. And so, again, we're just trusting that these things are okay or good for us and we want that. Part of our curse has been our convenience. We'll say that again, man, part of our curse has been our convenience, and so being able to have nonstick cookware, like that's a vibe. It just makes life easier.

And what are the side effects? What are the potential downsides? And that's where entities like the FDA really shit the bed and they're not showing up and looking out for our citizens, because there's no way that that should have been approved in the first place. It's really this I just mentioned one of the chemical compounds. There's a whole plethora of chemicals that go into this and we're exposing it to high temperatures to make our food on every day. What do you think's going to happen? Not to mention the fumes and, by the way, speaking of fumes, I don't want to miss this.

I talked a little bit earlier about vegetable oil and you know, again, this can be one of those things like it doesn't sound that bad and there is some science saying hey, you know, vegetable isn't that bad as these scientists might say. The leading expert in the world on the subject of vegetable oils and canola oils and healthy oils is Dr Kate Shanahan, and she was also the nutritionist for the Los Angeles Lakers, helping extend Brian's career. She got my guy on bone broth, like whenever he would travel.

1:15:11 - Speaker 1 I can go on and on.

1:15:11 - Speaker 2 She's got a lady a family medicine doctor like incredibly intelligent, but she's combed through hundreds, hundreds of studies on this stuff and, being a scientist and a physician, has really packaged up this data to understand these pieces. One of the things that I learned was this was published in the journal Inhalation Toxicology, looking at how inhaling certain things can be toxic.

1:15:36 - Speaker 1 And digesting just in the room.

1:15:39 - Speaker 2 The researchers found that just smelling canola oil while cooking can damage your DNA. Just the smell of it, that, just that sounds like everybody right now.

1:15:50 - Speaker 1 Go get, go ditch every piece of canola oil bottle you got in your house.

1:15:54 - Speaker 2 That's walk out of the room Some pepper, by the way, it sounds like for the smell of it when I said that, that's how I sounded, by the way. But, yes, go and do that. Get rid of the canola oil.

Don't just like let me finish the bottle, throw that shit away. There's. It is so unfit for human consumption it's like not even funny. And I remember when they hit the scene, like because my mother switched over, we were using like Crisco or whatever, and my grandfather, my grandparents, my grandfather, had multiple open heart surgeries and we lost him again far too young, from cardiac event and heart disease. And I remember my grandmother on the word of the physician get stop. Before any of the bad stuff.

The really bad stuff happened just when he had like some biomarkers that were elevated. Okay, right, get him off the butter, get him off the eggs, all this stuff, let's do canola oil, let's do not canola oil, but margarine. That was the big thing. Country croc, his big heart. Events happened after that. Damn it All. Right. Now, with that said, that's a partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, that's what. That's, what country croc is in these margarines. And so we're, we're altering what humans have evolved with. And, by the way, last piece here with this oil piece, dr Shanahan share with me and I mentioned this in the new cookbook as well that, no, I don't know if I did, sorry, edit.

1:17:22 - Speaker 1 Okay.

1:17:24 - Speaker 2 Dr Kate Shanahan mentioned this and share this with me, and I went and looked at this data as well that when biopsies were done on humans close to the 1900s and looking at what is the makeup of our fat cells like, what is in there Only about 2% of our fat cells were made of Pufas or polyunsaturated fatty acids. Right, this is the majority of what these canola oils, vegetable oils, you know, soybean oil they're very high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Fatty acids, pufas, where something like olive oil is very high in mono unsaturated fatty acids, are moofas moofas mofo is moofas moofas, moofas, you get down with the moofas.

1:18:07 - Speaker 1 Those fats are healthier and they just sound better. That's a smooth fat right there.

1:18:13 - Speaker 2 And now cut fast forward to today and monitoring the makeup of human fat cells now, versus 2% of our cells being made of Pufas back in the day, polyunsaturated fatty acids, upwards of about 30% of the average. Wow, persons, fat cells are now made of polyunsaturated fatty acids. So the literal ingredients that are making humans is changed, like our recipe to make us is different. Wow, you know and again, it's largely based on people are not just guzzling that kind of oil, it's coming from the ultra process foods they're consuming as well and our body's having a difficult time processing it and stowing away, tucking it into our fat cells. And an effort, our body's intelligence, to keep us safe, right, to protect our brain, to protect our heart, to protect our liver. It's doing what it can is making this adaptation, which then makes it very difficult to lose that fat.

1:19:03 - Speaker 1 Well, shout out our bodies again. It's like so many times we introduce things like this, like, all right, cool. What the hell do you want me to do with this? What am I supposed to do with this? We're not meant for this, but you know what I got you. Let me level up, let me evolve, let me figure out where to store it and how to make it as unsafe or make it as safe as possible, if that's even possible, until we can figure our shit out and detox and cleanse it out, because it can't happen that way. The body wants to not only survive but thrive, but we just got to be more mindful of what we're putting in.

1:19:36 - Speaker 2 We need the conditions to be able to do it Absolutely, and now we've cut to. So what do we do in this context where we got these nonstick pans? And, by the way, just because that one compound is removed, that's not the end of the story. There are other very dangerous compounds that more and more science is going to come out. You don't have to wait until then. Let's switch out those nonstick Teflon pans, and here are some better options.

1:20:00 - Speaker 1 Time testing.

1:20:01 - Speaker 2 So I'm going to go. There's several. I'm going to start with likely the safest but not the funnest, which is stainless steel. All right, stainless steel cooking for frying purposes. There are different purposes that it can be used for that are pretty convenient in their great for. But this is not a nonstick necessarily type of surface. You've got to be more crafty, you've got to understand the oils that you're using, the temperatures, all this stuff. But some people have been using stainless steel and cooking their asses off for the long. My mother-in-law is one of those people and I never thought about it until I started working on this book. Like, oh, wow, like she uses this and she never like, and her, her food is part of the reason that I am who I am today Absolutely Really changed my perception of the importance of nutrition was because of her. And so shout out to my mama mukami, she's, you know, from Kenya. Okay, shout out to mama mukami. And so we've got not, we've got stainless steel.

Something has been used for centuries by humans is cast iron. Now, with that said, there is a certain guild of people and researchers that are like with cast iron, the amount of iron that you might be picking up can be problematic. With that said, for the majority of people that is not going to be an issue. Okay, and in particular for women, let me just say that as well. But for for men, because women you know having a cycle, but for men this could be something that is geared towards better health, in a sense and there's a lot of solid science on this as well as like donating blood occasionally, you know, just, you know, maybe once a year or something like that. You know, at at at minimum, or even just not just donating blood but doing some blood tests, like when you do that, your body kicks in all of these regenerative factors to build new blood. It's really remarkable. But, with that being said, for most people it's not going to be an issue. However, I just want you to still operate with that caveat.

I love my cast iron pan. Well-seasoned cast iron pan can replace a lot of the nonstick purposes and, plus, you can shift from stove top to the oven. And again, humans have been using it for centuries, all right, in a time when we were far healthier. So shout out to cast iron pan. And as you see what I'm doing, I'm also saying, hey, this thing also has this thing over here. A lot of people won't do that. All right, because it's not just all sunshine, rainbows, right With everything. It rarely is, and so, and also even just shouting out like the good people at Pfizer you know what I mean Like, there is ballots here. We need to be more inclusive, all right. Now another one, which is really great because you know, especially today, there's a lot more accessible, or ceramic cookware as well Great for nonstick purposes and also so much lower on the potential toxicants. Okay, it's a very simple compounds use to make ceramic nonstick cookware versus Teflon's conglomeration of all these different chemicals which is a strong three line, and really you know everything that we're talking about here.

1:23:07 - Speaker 1 Especially you know nutrition, but the less ingredients, the better. The less materials, the better, same same.

1:23:13 - Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly. And so those are just a few options. There's also there's, obviously, glass cookware, you know, for baking purposes can be really great, like there's so many other options. But we, if we're just seeing through the lens of marketing, what's put in our face and also convenience, if we're just looking through that lens, we might not realize that we may be doing ourselves and our family harm. And so this is again. This book is not just about the science around social conditions and culture and how that affects our food and our health, our health outcomes and our food choices. But how can we create a healthier kitchen culture, how can we leverage insights about things like grocery shopping and how can we protect our family from cultural contagions? Because our culture is what is deciding the choices we make. Our culture is like an invisible hand, and I remember talking about this in economics back in college the invisible hand and free economics.

1:24:10 - Speaker 1 Yeah, man.

1:24:10 - Speaker 2 Listen, so that's a good show.

Yeah, that's really good when we, when we don't understand this, we might think that we're free, that I'm making my choices by free will. Yeah, you are making choices based on the reality that you are experiencing, based on the environment that you're in, and your culture is determining what choices are prevalent for you. And let me give an example. There are still hunter gatherer tribes on planet Earth. All right, the hot stuff. For example, a tribe of hunter gatherers. Because of their culture, their culture demands that they have to move in order to eat. If you don't move, you can you die. So movement is built into the culture. They have to move or you will die. And our culture. Movement is optional as fuck. It's optional, to say the least. You can move so little now and still get all the deliciousness you want, all the entertainment, all the companionship, you know and this, there's degrees with companionship.

1:25:16 - Speaker 1 Sit on the couch with Netflix and Uber Eats. You don't got to move.

1:25:20 - Speaker 2 Exactly, you get your social media right.

1:25:22 - Speaker 1 I'm being social. If you're even watching Netflix, usually we're just scrolling while we got something else rolling.

1:25:28 - Speaker 2 Oh man, the double screens man. You know, that's the new menage toit. Feel me, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay, I've seen people do the. Never mind, I'm gonna stop the analogy, I'm gonna stop the analogy it's so.

1:25:45 - Speaker 1 What a shansseen.

1:25:46 - Speaker 2 Seeds of shit. But, most importantly, it's us understanding that you know, we can shift the culture in our households because, again, our culture is driving our decisions. And so, with that Hunter Gather tribe, their culture is demanding movement in order to survive, and also their culture doesn't allow them to know that Chick-fil-A is a thing. Oh right, yeah.

1:26:11 - Speaker 1 You see, you understand, it's off the radar.

1:26:12 - Speaker 2 Yeah, their culture doesn't allow them to know that flaming hot Cheetos is food. There's no other option. Right Now, again, we can encroach on these cultures and they can start to adapt and change. Like they're wearing, like a you know, don't worry, be happy, tea-cert and shit, but in general they're not gonna be aware that they I can just go to 7-Eleven and throw my spear through a hot dog, right, they're living a different reality because of their culture is determining what they're aware of and the choices they're making. What if we can leverage that social, psychology, social science to transform our food culture? And that's what I'm advocating and creating with this East Martyr Family Cookbook.

How do we proactively shift our family culture? Because a lot of our energy, unfortunately, is lost or displaced by us trying to battle these big entities, right? So when you talked earlier about the enemies, I don't give a shit about them, I don't care. When it really boils down to it, I understand there's some dark things going on. I have power over my choices and I have power and influence with my family members under my roof. That's where I can change Control the controllables I was just talking with. This man is so remarkable. He's largely considered to be Tom Brady's primary mentor for his mindset when he was back at Michigan. Tom was thinking about quitting football before he ever really got started Before he met this guy Shit.

All right, greg Hardin, shout out to my guy, greg Hardin, and man, man, I just really had. Oh man, I could say so much about him, but one of the things that when he said it, it hit me different. He said so many people suffer because they're trying to control things they can't control. Your mission and what gives you a sense of certainty and power in your life is controlling the controllables. Control, focus on controlling the controllables. That's where your power is. That's where your sense of certainty, your sense of power and empowerment is. When you're out here trying to change, like holding up a you know picketing McDonald's, like yeah, maybe you can get like a person not to go in there, and you know, get the two for two. You know what I'm saying the Apple Pies or whatever.

1:28:31 - Speaker 1 They're just gonna get it. There's making noise and there's making a difference. Sometimes one happens because of the other, but, if I'm hearing it correctly, let's look at the things where we can just immediately more go to hey, let's make a difference.

1:28:42 - Speaker 2 Yes, and not to say that there isn't a place for that, for marching and for, you know, working for policy change, absolutely. You know, I'm being from Ferguson and seeing, I'm living in this glorified food desert. I'm living in a place where policies have allowed, for I'm talking. There isn't a fast food place you can name. You know the popular franchises that weren't within two miles of my apartment. I'm talking about, I am on all sides. I cannot go anywhere and not see them, because they're cheap and also they're leveraging the community right. They're taking advantage of this disparity and, unfortunately, the data is indicating that when we're in that place of disparity and chronic disease, we're more likely to stay in poverty. Right, and so that was my reality. I was just like feeding, literally feeding the problem. And so, yes, we need policy change.

But what happens is when people are not educated about food truly, because food is what's making up our bodies. It is top tier, primary importance. If we have a cardiologist who doesn't understand that the organ they're treating and their patient isn't made from the food that they're eating, we have a serious problem. And so what would happen when we're advocating for change, for social change in our communities, is we need more access to healthcare. What kind of healthcare are you getting with that access? More that's feeding the problem, that's disempowering you, that's directing you towards this pharmaceutical model, that's not educating you on how important your food is. We need access to real healthcare, real health empowerment, we need access to education about food and about social structures, and so this brings me back to my point, which is even within the confines of that community, you gotta be on your toes, and even within that, I created a culture of health within my doors, within that apartment door that I see manifest today in front of me. You see my son. You see my son Jordan, who's 22 now.

And he's working in fitness, he's on his nutrition, he's helping other people, he's empowering other people, the people that he's working with Lowkey, some of his clients. They're huge as far as empowerment and influencers themselves. They see something in him.

I saw it back then when I was making these changes and he didn't like all that shit he didn't like it when I was like we're not going to Burger King we're doing this, but I understood my power in that and eventually, of course, finding ways like how do we make this enjoyable? How do we make this? How do we make this not just as delicious as chemical or whatever, but more delicious? How do we find ways to really activate and leverage our desire as humans to enjoy tasty things without negative side effects, just joy. And how do we create a culture in our household that brings us together? And so this is the bottom line.

Researchers from Harvard analyze family data and they found that families who eat together more often number one they consume significantly more vital nutrients that prevent chronic diseases. Number two, they consume far less ultra-processed foods, including things like chips and soda. Again, not to villainize those things yeah, those are going to be things that you're going to interact with but by eating with your family more often, we're reducing that exposure. Also, research that was published in the journal Pediatrics and JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that families who eat together three or more times a week have significantly lower rates of obesity, specifically in children, significantly lower rates of eating disorders and, again, higher consumption of vital nutrients that protect them from chronic diseases. All right, three meals a week, that's really not that much. But today also this is from the Harvard researchers only about 30% of families are eating together on a regular basis. It's on the endangered species list, big time.

Yeah, really, truly, all right. Now the question would be and it arise for me, like how, like, how does this? This seems like this kind of invisible or like unseen protective metric for our health that we're not taking advantage of. I know that I can count on my hands how often I ate with my family, like we all sat down at eight together, like literally on my two hands. All right, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. And in those 10, in these, on my two hands, these are holidays. All right, real talk.

1:33:35 - Speaker 1 And so this was a part of our family culture.

1:33:37 - Speaker 2 That's forced upon, usually right, we evolved where food was interactive, collaborative and it was a part of the survival of the tribe.

1:33:48 - Speaker 1 Everybody had a role. It was so much more than the food, so much more than the eating, I mean yeah, yes, yes, that's how we evolved.

1:33:56 - Speaker 2 And then suddenly we're pulled away from the process of collecting our food ourselves. Okay, that's cool, we want some convenience. But we also started to get pulled away more and more from each other and the celebration around food, the connectivity around food, the unity that takes place around food, the communication, the problem solving, the creative thinking.

You can go on and on when now we've gone from that where it was a collective experience to now where more and more isolated, eating ultra-processed foods in front of a screen and this happened just in the last decade or two. It's devolved that quickly. Now, yes, let's have family movie night and enjoy some snacks together. Enjoy a meal. That's, yes, that's a great experience as humans in our modern society. But if we want to protect our children, if we want to create a culture of wellness with our children, if we want to prevent our children from making a living another thing that shocked me was how few it's like just generationally it's gone down more and more, with kids and now young adults not being able to cook food for themselves. They don't know how to do it. Like we're giving vital life skills to our children by bringing them into this process. Now it's time to take control of the controllables. Make changes in our own family culture, in our own kitchen culture, and our culture around the table is going to create a force field around your family. Now here's where we create community changes that when people see you, they see what's possible. The most powerful thing that you can do for the community, for your other family members, is to be the example. You're the walking, talking representation of what's possible. And we've got another family, we've got more human beings who are getting us to that tipping point where disease is no longer the norm, because right now, if you're healthy, you're not normal. That's the state of our society today, and so that's what this is all about. That's the mission behind it.

Yes, of course, all of the science around this stuff. There's over 250 scientific references in a cookbook. There's never been done. I would expect nothing less. My man, I would expect nothing less, but in a way that's entertaining and it's beautifully done. My family is all in this book, and also 100. These recipes. We're foodies, we love food. So how do we use the best foods in simple recipes as well? I don't want 27 ingredients. I don't want a Chick-fil-A alter.

1:36:25 - Speaker 1 That's how you lose people.

1:36:27 - Speaker 2 Yes, just making this easy and approachable and something that will become a manual, like something that will be in your kitchen. I know this book is going to stay in your kitchen.

1:36:35 - Speaker 1 It's going to be in mine. I know Absolutely, man.

1:36:37 - Speaker 2 Just to be able to access it, to make something delicious and to have those reminders, those cues, just to go back and reference things. It's really special.

1:36:46 - Speaker 1 Well, sean, I do need to get us wrapping up here, man, but there's so much more information that I extracted from you in your work for this book and having some early access to it, so I definitely want to remind the listener here that there's a lot I'm going to put in secondary, in the intro, and just so many other resources that will have a link for everybody, because it's beyond okay cool. Here are some neat ways to make a different dish. Here are ways to take your power back. Here are ways to set the model for the change that I know a lot of people in my life, in my audience, want, because it's not just about us. We got to take care of what we can take care of. We got to control our controllable, but we want more for everybody else along the way, and I know you do too, and I know that that's in this work and I know that's in the book. And congratulations, I know this is going to crush. It's an extension of Eat Smarter and Sleep Smarter and the Model Health show. That is just so obvious. So, again, congratulations, man.

I want to ask you my final question that now, third time, we're going to have three different answers. I brought it up a couple of times on the show, but living a life ever forward is really this it's controlling the control. It's choosing to not take these circumstances as the end all be all. We have power when we choose and that's going to be in our personal life, our spiritual life, our health, our wellness in any capacity. When you hear those words today, man, kind of being mindful now of nutrition and community and the relationships we have around that what does that mean to you? How would you say you live a life ever forward through kind of this recent work?

1:38:29 - Speaker 2 How would you describe that? What's changed? It's changed just even in the last couple of years and since our last conversation. Is that I don't know if it's just you hit a certain bracket in your time here on planet Earth. But I'm really thinking about future generations, I'm thinking about my family, I'm thinking about legacy and people. Fortunately, we're having conversations now about things like generational wealth, but I'm an advocate primarily for generational health and that really being the linchpin for enjoying any level of wealth or financial means, and none of that matters if you don't have your health.

So for me, that's what it is today, forward to the degree that I'm thinking about, what are the conditions that I'm helping to create and the resources that I'm creating for my children, for their children and for other families as well, because we are not here alone and that's unfortunately another one of these messages and another one of the cultural contagions is isolating us more and more and it's just an illusion. We pick up that phone and we go into this portal. We leave the present, when there are literally billions. There are billions of people here on the planet, real people, and we're all trying to connect and this is valuable, absolutely. It's a tool, but we don't want to become a tool ourselves by thinking that this is real life, and so for me, that's what it is Just putting in place, thinking forward, putting in place resources, insights, opportunities, planting those seeds in my children and also providing those for parents and grandparents to give to their kids, because I know we can change this thing In our lifetime.

1:40:13 - Speaker 1 We can change this Well, guys go get the book, check out all the things we've been talking about. I have everything linked for you down on the resources. What's up, man?

1:40:21 - Speaker 2 Is this coming out? Edit Is this coming out? Pre-order? Will you tell me yes, let's come out, we'll put this out for pre-order.

1:40:27 - Speaker 1 I can sit on it for a little while. We can wait for the release. Let's do a pre-order. Ok, all right.

1:40:31 - Speaker 2 Because I'll tell them about the OK lay it on.

1:40:34 - Speaker 1 It's laid on, so it's good for the pre-order.

1:40:35 - Speaker 2 All right, so should I. You want to say what you're going to say again.

1:40:39 - Speaker 1 No, go ahead, ok, all right.

1:40:41 - Speaker 2 So for people to pick up the book you can go to actually, yeah, ok, fuck it, we'll do it All right. So for people Well, let me think I should have talked with Ann. Yeah, let's do it. That's what feels good in my heart, ok.

1:40:56 - Speaker 1 And if it changes I can cut this part out. No, let's do it.

1:40:59 - Speaker 2 This feels right. Ok, so for people to pick up the book, and also we're doing a really powerful Hamley. I said Hamley, all right.

1:41:08 - Speaker 1 Talk about food too much. My bad, I'm like literally.

1:41:10 - Speaker 2 Spider-Ham and all this stuff downloaded. Ok, so for people to pick up a copy of the book. And also we're doing a very special Family Health and Fitness Summit. That's right. That's right. Yeah, all right, just help celebrate this. And we've got some of the most incredible people who have kids, who found a way to create a culture of health and wellness in their families, some of the most incredible people right now in fitness, in entertainment, in sports, reforming. So I'm talking about people like Layla Ali Ooh. All right. So she's undefeated world boxing champion, daughter of the greatest of all time, and also she's the greatest of all time in her own right in major ways, and she also won the TV show Chopped, the cooking show twice.

1:41:53 - Speaker 1 That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, All right.

1:41:55 - Speaker 2 All right. So she's about that life when it comes to food the Chopped Champ, yeah and her dedication to integrity and food quality, all those things and also she makes it a mandatory part of her family life that she's cooking meals for her family multiple times a week. I've been there, I've eaten with her and just having these experiences so people get to learn from her directly. And Dr Daniel Amon, who I talked about he's the leading neuroscientist in the world when it comes to really actually seeing and studying the brain using imaging, and I mean his list of clients is like I mean everybody from Justin Bieber to the NFL. He did the big CT East.

1:42:33 - Speaker 1 He just did one with all the Kardashians too. I remember, yeah, like again all the famous people are.

1:42:39 - Speaker 2 When they find about him, they're trying to go to Daniel Amon, but I'll tell you he's a real one, though, Because Hollywood stuff can be a little sketchy and interesting, but he's dedicated to helping everyday folks. Primarily that's what he's doing, and he also has a family. He has a family, he has kids and, oh my goodness, just the again, I know his kids as well and seeing real proof of concept how these things can work in real life, right? So Dr Daniel Amon, gabby Reese oh yeah, yeah, you know and Dr Will Bolsowicz, leading gastroenterologist. So gut health and all that stuff. Again.

People who have kids, though, and to learn about creating a culture of fitness and health in their household. So they walk the walk, walk the talk. You get free access to the summit when you pre-order the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. The ticket to the summit is $297, and you get it for free, hell yeah. And so go to With the book. With the book, so go to eatsmartercookbookcom and pre-order your copy, and you're going to get access to the Family Health and Fitness Summit.

And also we're doing a 25K health and fitness giveaway. So, as I've been mentioning, these different friends and colleagues that have opportunities and access to foods like Thrive Market right groceries delivered to your house. So we're giving away, like they're helping, they're contributing $500 in groceries from Thrive Market, fitness equipment, from all Pulling the whole family together, I mean. Just the list goes on and on. So you're going to get instantly entered into that 50, there's going to be 50 winners. So that's just some of this stuff, damn. So go to eatsmartercookbookcom, pre-order the book right now and you get access to all those incredible bonuses too.

1:44:20 - Speaker 1 Again, I'll have everything linked to course video notes, show notes, podcasts for everybody. Man, this is it's always a treat sitting down with you and just hearing your research, your wisdom, your personal experience and the way that you just kind of alchemize it all together. You know, this isn't the Sean Stevenson way. This is Look, this is real life, this is my experience. Here's the science and literature that's available to anybody to look at and just choose you, choose you at the end of the day, man. So thank you, thank you, brother, it's my honor.