Speaker 1: You talk to a person the day before they're going
Speaker 1: to die, they would give anything and everything for more
Speaker 1: chance at life. Best selling author and host.
Speaker 2: The number one health and wellness.
Speaker 3: Podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone, welcome back
Speaker 3: to On Purpose, where you're choosing to listen to become happier, healthier,
Speaker 3: and more healed. That's our mission here to leave you
Speaker 3: feeling happier, healthier, and more healed after listening to these
Speaker 3: conversations these workshops every single day. And I'm so grateful
Speaker 3: to you for your commitment and dedication to yourself, your
Speaker 3: investment in yourself and lending your ears and your eyes
Speaker 3: to me. I know some of you are listening every
Speaker 3: single day, so thank you and keep those reviews coming,
Speaker 3: keep all of that positive energy coming. It means the
Speaker 3: world to me. And today's guest is honestly the person
Speaker 3: that I've been waiting to talk to all year. Because
Speaker 3: of scheduling, we kept missing each other. I was on
Speaker 3: a world tour. He's busy traveling. He's launched an incredible
Speaker 3: new book this year helping people, and I'm just so
Speaker 3: happy that we finally have him here at our La Studio.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about Peter Atier the founder of Early Medical,
Speaker 3: a medical practice that applies the principles of medicine three
Speaker 3: point zero to patients with the goal of lengthening their
Speaker 3: lifespan and simultaneously improving their health span. Peter is the
Speaker 3: host of The Drive. If you don't already subscribe, make
Speaker 3: sure you do, a podcast covering the topics of health
Speaker 3: and medicine. Peter is also the author of the number
Speaker 3: one New York Times bestseller Outlive, The Science and Art
Speaker 3: of Longevity. This is the book that I recommend if
Speaker 3: you're going to read about your health right now. This
Speaker 3: is the book I want you to go and get.
Speaker 3: Peter Rezier, Welcome to on Purpose, and thank you for
Speaker 3: being here. Thank you so much, Jack, And then everything
Speaker 3: I said, I was really really looking forward to this conversation,
Speaker 3: and I want to dive into many aspects of the book,
Speaker 3: many topics. I've also sourced questions from my team, community people,
Speaker 3: real real life questions that I think people are really
Speaker 3: struggling with. But I actually want to start with your
Speaker 3: journey in your story because I've gone through similar moments
Speaker 3: in my life where at a young age, I've had
Speaker 3: different health challenges when I started to get the right
Speaker 3: help and support, I started to realize how detrimental those
Speaker 3: health challenges could be long term if I wasn't to
Speaker 3: shift things. And the problem is, I've always been a
Speaker 3: fairly healthy guy and had healthy habits, and so when
Speaker 3: you get that kind of news, it's kind of alarming
Speaker 3: and scary and can set fear into you. Now, I
Speaker 3: know that in your journey, you were a generally healthy
Speaker 3: person doing pretty healthy things, only to find out that
Speaker 3: actually you were prone or open to a terrible disease
Speaker 3: down the road. So could you walk us through what
Speaker 3: it feels like to think you're healthy, to maybe even
Speaker 3: feel you're doing okay, but in reality there's something going
Speaker 3: on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think there were two sort of
Speaker 1: things that were a wake up call for me, and
Speaker 1: neither of these things happen immediately. I think it's just
Speaker 1: sometimes the realization that happens immediately. So the first one
Speaker 1: is I'd always been an athlete my whole life, insanely active,
Speaker 1: potentially even you know, active to an unhealthy level. And
Speaker 1: you know the focus of that obsession had always shifted.
Speaker 1: But at the point in the story that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: at this point, I was sort of an ultra distance swimmer,
Speaker 1: so I was you know, probably in the water swimming
Speaker 1: twenty four to twenty eight hours a week, plus you know,
Speaker 1: other types of training. Yet you know, I found out
Speaker 1: this is probably around fifteen years ago, that well, actually
Speaker 1: on top of that, I was sort of insulin resistant,
Speaker 1: I was overweight. And again not that I didn't know
Speaker 1: I was overweight, you sort of can realize that, but
Speaker 1: that I was sort of insulin resistant, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the first step on the way towards
Speaker 1: type two diabetes. It was really at that time that
Speaker 1: I also, i think, confronted my own family history, so
Speaker 1: just within my genes, the acknowledgment that you know, basically
Speaker 1: every man in my family died prematurely of heart disease,
Speaker 1: and in some cases very prematurely in their forties. Those
Speaker 1: two realizations in my mid thirties, which also happened to
Speaker 1: coincide with the birth of my daughter, which my first child,
Speaker 1: was a real wake up call. And the realization that
Speaker 1: you know, I needed to figure something out so that
Speaker 1: I didn't just you know, march down the footsteps of
Speaker 1: what seemed to be my destiny.
Speaker 3: And even then you were in the medical profession right
Speaker 3: or now.
Speaker 1: Although I had actually left medicine at this point, So
Speaker 1: after ten years of medical training, including medical school, I
Speaker 1: became sort of disillusioned with medicine and left. So at
Speaker 1: the time that I'm having this realization, I'm actually in
Speaker 1: the world of finance and quite far from medicine.
Speaker 3: What was your biggest fear at the time, Like, if
Speaker 3: you could take yourself back to that moment, like, what
Speaker 3: was the fear that you.
Speaker 1: Had, Yeah, that I wouldn't be around to, you know,
Speaker 1: be with my grandkids and things of that nature, because
Speaker 1: I think, you know, prior to my daughter being born,
Speaker 1: I didn't really think I would be the kind of
Speaker 1: person who would find any joy in having kids, and
Speaker 1: that changed in an instant the second she was born.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are lots of people who can relate
Speaker 1: to that, probably more so men than women, I think,
Speaker 1: because this switch is a little more by when we
Speaker 1: have kids, and then the thought of you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to relive this in thirty years with grandkids.
Speaker 1: I think that was probably the thing that was the
Speaker 1: most motivating factor.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it needs that kind of incentive to get activated,
Speaker 3: and the reason I asked that question is everyone who's
Speaker 3: listening or watching, I want you to think about what
Speaker 3: that fear, what that challenge is for you, because often
Speaker 3: fear isn't a great motivator to keep going, but it's
Speaker 3: a great place to start, and our health almost starts
Speaker 3: there sometimes, Like I remember that, I remember feeling like
Speaker 3: Superman when I was in my early twenties and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden having certain health challenges. I got
Speaker 3: into chronic fatigue, I had polyps in my throat that
Speaker 3: had to be lasered out. I lost my voice for
Speaker 3: a few months, and that wasn't life threatening, but it
Speaker 3: was life altering in the sense that I couldn't communicate
Speaker 3: in the same way. It was different getting my voice
Speaker 3: back and not feeling like it was as strong or powerful,
Speaker 3: and then having gut issues and inflammation issues and acid
Speaker 3: issues and all of these things again like they weren't.
Speaker 3: It's not that my life was going to end that year,
Speaker 3: but it's like, you start thinking long term, and you
Speaker 3: start thinking about living a unhealthier, harder life. When is
Speaker 3: the right time for people to consciously start actually investing
Speaker 3: in their health. And I'm going to caveat that with
Speaker 3: what is generally happening and happening in the different decades
Speaker 3: of our life. So what's happening between zero tooten ten
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty to thirty thirty to forty forty to
Speaker 3: fifty And when is the time when you have a
Speaker 3: bit more control and ability to shift the trajectory of
Speaker 3: your health bar any of course, major complications or surprises.
Speaker 1: I've never actually been asked it that way, but the
Speaker 1: way you asked it kind of makes me think about
Speaker 1: different things the aging process. In some ways, there are
Speaker 1: some aspects of it that are moving in the wrong
Speaker 1: direction the moment you were born, in other words, the
Speaker 1: moment of fetus comes into this world. There are certain
Speaker 1: aspects of aging that are only getting worse. There are
Speaker 1: others that are not. So you have to imagine. Now
Speaker 1: they're talkquack about different things. So I'll give you an example
Speaker 1: of each. Something that's getting worse the second you're born
Speaker 1: is the damage to your arteries. So we call this
Speaker 1: process athosclerosis. This is what leads to heart attacks and strokes.
Speaker 1: Heart attack and stroke is the leading cause of death
Speaker 1: in the United States for both men and women, and
Speaker 1: globally for both men, and women, but it takes an
Speaker 1: awfully long time. That's why you've never heard of a
Speaker 1: baby having a heart attack. That's why teenagers don't have
Speaker 1: heart attacks, and people in their twenties, it's almost unheard
Speaker 1: of they would have a heart attack. But the disease
Speaker 1: is starting right away. And we know this because when
Speaker 1: we've looked at people who have died prematurely from other
Speaker 1: causes car accidents, homicide, suicide, and you look at their
Speaker 1: cornary arteries, you already see evidence of disease. So we
Speaker 1: know that this is happening right away, and it's simply
Speaker 1: a matter of time until it reaches a critical level
Speaker 1: that results in disease. And of course everybody's accelerating at
Speaker 1: a different rate based on many factors genetics, smoking, high
Speaker 1: blood pressure, metabolic health, all these other things. But point being,
Speaker 1: that's something for which you could technically argue it's never
Speaker 1: too soon to start prevention. Then there are other things
Speaker 1: in which we're actually getting better and better and better
Speaker 1: until we reach a certain point and then we start
Speaker 1: to demise. And an example there might be sort of
Speaker 1: cognitive capacity, so we might have our greatest neuroplasticity in
Speaker 1: the first few years of life. But we're also building
Speaker 1: on that, and if we're in the right environment, we're
Speaker 1: exposed to the right things, we're actually getting better and
Speaker 1: better and better at our fluid intelligence, and that probably
Speaker 1: reaches our peak sometime in our third decade. So that's
Speaker 1: something where you know you're actually getting better and better
Speaker 1: and better, and then it slowly starts to decline. And
Speaker 1: then there are all sorts of things that are mixtures
Speaker 1: of these things. So for example, your physical capacity, your
Speaker 1: muscle mass, strength, power type two, muscle fibers, cardiorespiratory fitness,
Speaker 1: all of those things are also increasing in capacity. Again
Speaker 1: depending on which of those things we're taught talking about.
Speaker 1: If it's power and explosiveness that probably peaks early in
Speaker 1: the third decade, if it's strength that peaks a little
Speaker 1: bit later, peak cardiorespiratory fitness again in your twenties, and
Speaker 1: then those things will start to decline. What's undoubtedly clear
Speaker 1: is for you and I were pretty much in decline.
Speaker 1: So most people listening to this are in a state
Speaker 1: of decline. And part of the objective I think ought
Speaker 1: to be to slow the rate of decline as much
Speaker 1: as possible. But there's another aspect of your question I
Speaker 1: think is very important, right, which is like, at what
Speaker 1: point should you start putting effort into this? And that's
Speaker 1: a very difficult question because it encompasses a couple of things.
Speaker 1: When you talk to a person, let's do this as
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. You talk to a person the day
Speaker 1: before they're going to die. I mean, they would give
Speaker 1: anything and everything they have for more chance at life.
Speaker 1: Despite how high their motivation is, there's no runway left. Conversely,
Speaker 1: if you went into a high school and talked to
Speaker 1: a bunch of freshmen and said I've got the program
Speaker 1: for you that is going to add fifteen years to
Speaker 1: your life, I mean, they couldn't be less interested. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's a sweet spot somewhere where I almost think
Speaker 1: people need to go through a little bit of decline,
Speaker 1: kind of like what you described. It wasn't life threatening,
Speaker 1: but you just need to realize that you're fallible to
Speaker 1: sort of say, hmm, I can project this movie forward
Speaker 1: a couple of decades. I've now mature enough to maybe
Speaker 1: see my parents, see my grandparents, aunts, uncle's friends, people's
Speaker 1: health deteriorate, and realize that's a bit of a reality
Speaker 1: check that it's coming for me, but yet I still
Speaker 1: have long enough to bend the arc of my life.
Speaker 1: And so I think those are the two curves that
Speaker 1: we're trying to intersect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great answer, and I appreciate that. I
Speaker 3: feel the same way it. Unfortunately, it always comes through
Speaker 3: some sort of pain or some sort of reality check
Speaker 3: or wake up call that gets us going. And it's
Speaker 3: interesting what you were saying about cognitive function and ability
Speaker 3: as well. There were studies that I read that said
Speaker 3: that the average age of most successful entrepreneurs is thirty seven.
Speaker 3: And it's fascinating because we live in a world right
Speaker 3: now where everyone wants to be a successful entrepreneur by
Speaker 3: the time they're twenty one or twenty five, and we
Speaker 3: put these artificial pressures on ourselves when actually there's so
Speaker 3: much more to it in the genetics versus environment debate.
Speaker 3: What you what's the latest in that space of like,
Speaker 3: because I think we're not You said you dove into
Speaker 3: your family's history. I think most of us are not
Speaker 3: fully aware of our family's history, even though every time
Speaker 3: I saw doctor growing up, they'd always ask is there
Speaker 3: this in your family's history? Is there that? First of all,
Speaker 3: how where do we need to be of our family's history?
Speaker 3: How important is that for people to figure out? And
Speaker 3: second of all, what is that breakdown between genetics and
Speaker 3: personal environment and career and work?
Speaker 1: You know, I think actually family history is such an
Speaker 1: important thing. It's one of these things that we stress
Speaker 1: to the ends degree with our patients, so much so
Speaker 1: that you know, it takes them weeks sometimes to gather
Speaker 1: information that we want to know because we want to know,
Speaker 1: and we give them ten questions for each member of
Speaker 1: the family. So your parents, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles,
Speaker 1: your siblings, Like, we want to know everything. Do they
Speaker 1: have high blood pressure, do they have high cholesterol? Do
Speaker 1: they take this medication? Did they take that medication? What
Speaker 1: was their cognitive function like in the last decade of
Speaker 1: their life? You know? What type of cancers did they have?
Speaker 1: Did they have low bone density? You know, do they
Speaker 1: have osteoporosis? I mean, we really want to understand every
Speaker 1: detail about it. And I think a big part of
Speaker 1: the reason why is, contrary to what maybe people believe,
Speaker 1: a genetic test does not give you that information. So
Speaker 1: if you and I went out and got a genetic test,
Speaker 1: and I don't just mean an you know, over the
Speaker 1: counter genetic test like twenty three and meet. But I'm
Speaker 1: saying if we went out and got the best whole
Speaker 1: genome sequence money could buy, we spend thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars and literally looked at every one of our
Speaker 1: you know, twenty to thirty thousand genes, we still wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to impute from a standpoint what you can
Speaker 1: gather from a very well collected family history. And the
Speaker 1: reason for that is most genes by themselves are not deterministic,
Speaker 1: which really gets your second question. So if most genes
Speaker 1: are not deterministic, they need something in the environment to
Speaker 1: sort of trigger them. Furthermore, most conditions that we care
Speaker 1: about are polygenic. It's easy to think of the sort
Speaker 1: of Mendelian monogene type conditions. They get a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: and they're important, to be sure, but the vast majority
Speaker 1: of things that people care about, cancer, heart disease, dementia,
Speaker 1: they are not really just related to a single gene.
Speaker 1: And in many cases we don't even know what the
Speaker 1: collection of genes look like. So genes matter, But I
Speaker 1: think we're going to get the majority of our information
Speaker 1: by understanding our family history in terms of susceptibility, and
Speaker 1: the environment matters greatly. And the extension of that is,
Speaker 1: of course you have great agency over that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what is the best methodology for getting the
Speaker 3: family history in a complete comprehensive way that's actually going.
Speaker 1: To it can be hard if members of the family
Speaker 1: are deceased. So for people your age and my age,
Speaker 1: you know, our grandparents, I mean, at least for me,
Speaker 1: my grandparents are long gone. Yes, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: do your parents really remember? And part of it just
Speaker 1: comes down to are they being prompted by the right
Speaker 1: questions now? Again, to be honest, in my family history,
Speaker 1: I have very limited understanding of grandparents because you know,
Speaker 1: they just died long enough ago, and frankly, I don't
Speaker 1: think my parents were necessarily great historians of this. In
Speaker 1: my case, where the bulk of my understanding came from
Speaker 1: was that my dad came from a very large family.
Speaker 1: You know, there were ten kids, two that died young,
Speaker 1: so eight that survived to adulthood, and there I was
Speaker 1: able to elucidate really good information and really understand that
Speaker 1: there's something very bad going on with respect to heart
Speaker 1: disease on my mom's side, I could also see some
Speaker 1: issues with her two siblings as well. That also gave
Speaker 1: me a sense of you know what some predispositions might be.
Speaker 3: Where can people find those questions? Well, how can they
Speaker 3: connect with that approach?
Speaker 1: No, that's a good question, I don't We We have
Speaker 1: a program that we've developed called Early, which is like
Speaker 1: a digital product that is our practice. I know that
Speaker 1: it is within there, got it? Yeah? Yeah, So if
Speaker 1: people like look for EARLY, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: I should know how to do this. If you go
Speaker 1: to like earlymedical dot com, there's a way to find it.
Speaker 2: Got it? Got it? Okay? Perfect? Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, I think that that kind of practical step is
Speaker 3: so needed because one of the biggest things when I
Speaker 3: was talking to my team and talking to the community
Speaker 3: about health, one of the biggest things that came out is, Jay,
Speaker 3: we're just stuck on where to start. Like, I don't
Speaker 3: know where to start. I don't there's just too much
Speaker 3: information out there. It's oversaturated. Everyone's telling me to do
Speaker 3: this and that, and it's almost like, let's figure out
Speaker 3: your genetic history. Like that's a great place to start,
Speaker 3: because that's where we came.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this program Early is divided into twelve modules. We
Speaker 1: think each module would take you about a month to
Speaker 1: get through, and that's the first or second module. I
Speaker 1: think the first module is setting your goals and going
Speaker 1: through kind of this type of exercise, and then the
Speaker 1: second module is, Okay, how do you get your family history?
Speaker 1: How do you take that information and extract what the
Speaker 1: implications are for you and then go from there.
Speaker 3: What's your take on like full body scans and that
Speaker 3: kind of testing and how often should it be done?
Speaker 3: Because I think, again, what's happening. I was talking to
Speaker 3: some younger people in our audiences gen Z and it
Speaker 3: was just like, going to see a doctor has become
Speaker 3: like not even a thought.
Speaker 2: And I could see that.
Speaker 3: In my generation, but I remember my parents' generation, like
Speaker 3: my mom will still call me up and be like,
Speaker 3: have you seen the dentist every six months? Like have
Speaker 3: you been to the doctor every twelve months? Like you know,
Speaker 3: my mom will still do that with me. But I
Speaker 3: find that that kind of culture is diminishing day by
Speaker 3: day because of a lack of trust, because of a
Speaker 3: lack of transparency. So many different things could just be
Speaker 3: laziness and complacency. What is your take on getting checks
Speaker 3: which checks how often, And I guess the question is
Speaker 3: how do people know how healthy they are? And early
Speaker 3: is a great plan, But from the other point of view.
Speaker 1: It depends on the type of scam. So, for example,
Speaker 1: there are certain scans that are going to be very
Speaker 1: helpful at predicting risk from heart disease. So for example,
Speaker 1: a coordinary calcium scan for the heart or a CT
Speaker 1: angiogram for the heart. Those are tests that I don't
Speaker 1: think are absolutely essential, but they can be very helpful.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to further stratify risk, you refer to
Speaker 1: a whole body scan. So the best example of a
Speaker 1: whole body scan that I think provides value is an MRI.
Speaker 1: The reason being as an MRI doesn't have radiation, whereas
Speaker 1: a whole body CT scan or a PET scan would
Speaker 1: have staggering amounts of radiation. We would never want to
Speaker 1: do that just from a screening perspective, But of course,
Speaker 1: not all MRIs are created equal, and anytime you're doing
Speaker 1: a screening test, you have to be aware of something
Speaker 1: called sensitivity and specificity, and these are really important parameters.
Speaker 1: We've put out a lot of content on this because
Speaker 1: I think it's very confusing for people. So sensitivity is
Speaker 1: the capacity of a test to detect something if the
Speaker 1: something is present. So if you're looking at a sensitivity
Speaker 1: of an MRI scanner for cancer, the sensitivity is how
Speaker 1: likely is this to detect cancer if cancer is present. So,
Speaker 1: on the topic of whole body scanners, MRIs are very sensitive.
Speaker 1: And again not all homeris are critic equal, but I'm
Speaker 1: assuming we're talking about the best of the best. YEA, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good news. Means, if you go into an MRI
Speaker 1: scanner and you have a cancer, the MRI is quite
Speaker 1: likely to pick it up. Now, it does have some
Speaker 1: blind spots, and every screening test has a blind spot.
Speaker 1: So a blind spot that's worth acknowledging for an MRI
Speaker 1: is a small calcified breast cancer that's easily going to
Speaker 1: get missed by an MRI, And that's why it's not
Speaker 1: a substitute for mimography. A woman would need to do both.
Speaker 1: The next parameter of a screening test is the specificity.
Speaker 1: This says, how likely is this test to give you
Speaker 1: a negative result if indeed the condition is not present.
Speaker 1: So it's the mirror opposite of sensitivity. Here is where
Speaker 1: those whole body scanners are abysmal. They have very low specificity.
Speaker 1: What that translates to in English is they have a
Speaker 1: lot of false positives. I always tell patients, look, if
Speaker 1: you're going to go and get the scans, and we
Speaker 1: advocate that our patients do, but they we do it
Speaker 1: in a much more kind of robust way where it's
Speaker 1: part of a multiple system of screening tests, so that
Speaker 1: we're covering the bases of everything and trying to attach
Speaker 1: to the strength and weakness of each study. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to that MRI, we say, look, there's a
Speaker 1: really good chance you're going to come out of this
Speaker 1: test and there's going to be some false positives we're
Speaker 1: going to need to chase down. So I always feel
Speaker 1: bad when people sign up to do these scans and
Speaker 1: they aren't aware of that, because it generates sometimes more
Speaker 1: stress on the back end. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went through that. We had an MRI done
Speaker 3: and they found like almost like a group or a
Speaker 3: cluster of things in an area and they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: that could be cancer. And I had to go and
Speaker 3: do a endoscopy as well, and luckily they found it
Speaker 3: was nothing. But I remember for that week before I
Speaker 3: was like, that's it.
Speaker 2: It's all over here. It is, you know, I need
Speaker 2: to well, I think.
Speaker 1: Sometimes if you're told up front, hey Jay, there's like
Speaker 1: a fifteen percent chance I didn't I was not told
Speaker 1: about that, and we want to make sure our patients understand.
Speaker 1: And by the way, a subset of a patient's probably
Speaker 1: ten percent decide I don't want to have the scan
Speaker 1: because I don't want to cope with that stress.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was real.
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, I'm going to have to
Speaker 3: get focused on figuring this out because it sounds bad
Speaker 3: and I didn't have that lay up, as you said,
Speaker 3: And it's really interesting. And that's what I find so
Speaker 3: fascinating today, right, Like, there's managing your health, and then
Speaker 3: there's the stress and the pain that comes with figuring
Speaker 3: your health out, whether it's the overexposure to too much information,
Speaker 3: whether it's bad information in the past, and then we're like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: just forget it. I don't want to do any of it.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what I feel your book does, and
Speaker 3: that's what your work does is trying to help people
Speaker 3: figure out, well, let me give you all the information.
Speaker 3: Here's how you can know what's good for you and
Speaker 3: test it for you and write for you. One of
Speaker 3: the things that I love that you talk about is
Speaker 3: you talk about the need to get rid of, you know,
Speaker 3: just focusing on a random diet or following a random
Speaker 3: diet and actually looking at like eating habits and patterns
Speaker 3: work for you, and so just putting a little footnote
Speaker 3: for everyone who's listening. The book will walk you through
Speaker 3: how to make sense of how to know what is
Speaker 3: right for you, what is wrong for you, whether you
Speaker 3: should do something, which I think is like the biggest
Speaker 3: anxiety driver for so many people when it comes to
Speaker 3: their health, when it comes to food. I think fasting
Speaker 3: has become trendy. It's become a big thing that everyone's
Speaker 3: talking about. You know, we hear so much about every
Speaker 3: single diet in the world. There's always a new one
Speaker 3: that's coming on the surface. How have you helped people
Speaker 3: one on one actually discover what's right for them because
Speaker 3: I found that my eating patterns are very different to
Speaker 3: the trending habits of how to eat food and even fasting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is, as
Speaker 1: you said, it's just letting people understand that the less
Speaker 1: you can pay attention to social media fads and your
Speaker 1: news feed on Google or whatever, the better acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition
Speaker 1: and health, and people are going to be shocked to
Speaker 1: hear that, because I think most people think the exact
Speaker 1: thay opposite. Most people think that nutrition is the most
Speaker 1: important pillar of health, and the reality of it is
Speaker 1: outside of very extreme states, that's really not true. And
Speaker 1: the very little bit we know about nutrition just frankly
Speaker 1: speaks to the challenge of scientific inquiry into something as
Speaker 1: difficult as nutrition to study. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: is you can't study us as humans very well. We're
Speaker 1: very messy subjects, so we're not like mice where you
Speaker 1: can put us in a cage and control what we're
Speaker 1: eating and follow us through the duration of our lives.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way. So when you're trying to
Speaker 1: make inferences about nutrition in humans, you have to rely
Speaker 1: on poorly controlled studies called epidemiologic studies, which are fraught
Speaker 1: with all sorts of limitations that I talk about in
Speaker 1: the book. Or if you're going to control the study,
Speaker 1: you can only do it for a very short period
Speaker 1: of time. There's only a short period of time in
Speaker 1: which I can control exactly what you're eating. So as
Speaker 1: a result of that, we don't know a lot. I
Speaker 1: always want to start with what do we know. Well,
Speaker 1: we know that protein is a very important macronutrient. There
Speaker 1: are four macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and alcohol. People kind
Speaker 1: of forget alcohol, but some import of understand it's very
Speaker 1: caloric and so it constitutes a source of energy. It's
Speaker 1: the worst macronutrient, but nevertheless it's you know, you'd be
Speaker 1: amazed sometimes people are going to think fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: percent of their calories from alcohol if they drink enough.
Speaker 1: So protein is really important, and it's not a source
Speaker 1: of energy the way carbohydrates and fat is, but it's
Speaker 1: a structural macronutrient. And so I always start with that
Speaker 1: and say, look, rule number one is you have to
Speaker 1: make sure you're getting enough protein. And this is especially
Speaker 1: true if you're over fifty because if you're over fifty,
Speaker 1: you start to become resistant to the effects of protein.
Speaker 1: That's called anabolic resistance, and loss of muscle mass in
Speaker 1: people over fifty is a significant driver of mortality and
Speaker 1: a significant driver of a poor quality of life. You know,
Speaker 1: if you really start to think about it. Even if
Speaker 1: a person is of sound mind and they're not not
Speaker 1: suffering from some intractable disease later in life, a great
Speaker 1: source of misery is simply being physically unable to do things.
Speaker 1: After that, it really comes down to what do we
Speaker 1: understand about energy balance. Well, we understand that too much
Speaker 1: nutrition I call this over nutrition is bad and that
Speaker 1: the body historically developed lots of tools to store energy
Speaker 1: because that's what allowed us to evolve the way we did,
Speaker 1: and up until I don't know, one hundred years ago
Speaker 1: or so, that was a great skill to have. It's
Speaker 1: now thwarting us in an environment of too much food.
Speaker 1: So now this ability that we had the superpower basically
Speaker 1: to store excess energy has become a liability. In the
Speaker 1: United States, certainly, the vast majority of people, probably over
Speaker 1: seventy percent of people are over nourished, and that's the
Speaker 1: thing that's driving a lot of their poor health. If
Speaker 1: you're over nourished, you have to correct that problem. The
Speaker 1: way to correct that problem is to eat less, and
Speaker 1: there are three strategies to do that. One of them
Speaker 1: is to deliberately go about cutting calories. That's called calorie
Speaker 1: restriction or cr The other one is called dietary restriction
Speaker 1: that means limit certain things within the diet and if
Speaker 1: you are restrictive enough, that will indirectly also reduce total intake.
Speaker 1: And then the third is fasting or time restricted eating,
Speaker 1: where you create a narrower and narrower window each day
Speaker 1: in which to eat. All of these things can work,
Speaker 1: and all of those things have significant limitations that you,
Speaker 1: as an individual practicing this need to know.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was incredible.
Speaker 3: I was looking at the just history of the design
Speaker 3: of plates and cups randomly.
Speaker 2: I don't even know how I got there.
Speaker 1: How much bigger they're getting, just how much bigger.
Speaker 3: They're getting, And it was insane for me to think
Speaker 3: that the way plates are designed, the way cups are designed,
Speaker 3: the way anything's designed, transforms how we consume. And it's
Speaker 3: fascinating to think that just because of a larger plate, size.
Speaker 3: We're now eating larger amounts and we think it's normal
Speaker 3: in our time, where someone else would have think we
Speaker 3: were feasting.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you still get back to Europe all the time,
Speaker 1: but like, look at the difference in portion sizes when
Speaker 1: you're in you know, Italy versus the United States. It's
Speaker 1: comical what a difference it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember as a kid coming to the States, and
Speaker 3: obviously when you're a kid, everything that's big is better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I remember like pulling over at the gas station
Speaker 3: and I'd see like this massive, like you know, jumbo
Speaker 3: thing to fill your drink up in and like you know,
Speaker 3: forever refills whatever it is, and just that as a kid,
Speaker 3: I was like, this is the coolest thing of the world.
Speaker 3: And now you look at it and you're like, wow,
Speaker 3: that's you know, there's no need for that. So it's
Speaker 3: fascinating also how these cultural shifts and cultural changes have
Speaker 3: made some of these things harder for us today. So
Speaker 3: you said, cr, DR and TR those are the three
Speaker 3: that people need to experiment with.
Speaker 2: Each of those.
Speaker 1: Yes, Basically, if you are in that over nourished camp,
Speaker 1: you need to employ some combination of cr DR and
Speaker 1: or TR and if you're adequately muscled, that's you just
Speaker 1: you can just focus on that. If you're inadequately muscled,
Speaker 1: you have the added challenge of needing to boost protein
Speaker 1: intake to match strength training while engaging in cr DR. Try.
Speaker 1: But the route of it is that's it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of it, the alphabet soup of diets is
Speaker 1: just it's all noise. I just encourage people to not
Speaker 1: fixate on the trend and just think about those different
Speaker 1: things because you know, look, each of the alphabet soup
Speaker 1: diets fits into some form of DR. I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's true whether you're talking carnivore or vegan or everything
Speaker 1: in between. Those are just forms of DR and they
Speaker 1: can all be effective, but you have to be aware
Speaker 1: of the limitations of each and make sure you're circumventing them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think that one of the things that there's a
Speaker 3: lot of question marks around as well from the community
Speaker 3: that they were asking was nutrition, which you've beautifully clarified there,
Speaker 3: but nutrition versus supplements and the need for supplements, and
Speaker 3: I think I would love to hear your takes on
Speaker 3: supplements that are working, types of supplements, types of ingredients,
Speaker 3: types of chemicals that are making a difference natural supplements too.
Speaker 3: I'd love to hear your thoughts on neotropics because I'm
Speaker 3: just hearing about neotropics everywhere right now. Adaptogens as you
Speaker 3: just tried as well. We've been focusing on adaptogens. I'd
Speaker 3: love to let's talk about your take on great supplements
Speaker 3: that everyone needs to take. Not not a brand, but
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, and then you take on neotropics and adaptagens.
Speaker 3: That would be fantastic.
Speaker 1: I mean, I definitely do take some supplements. I'm always
Speaker 1: careful to kind of make disclosures. So one thing I
Speaker 1: do supplement, I take something called AG and I'm an
Speaker 1: investor in AG, but I've been taking it long before
Speaker 1: I invested in it, and I know the founder very well.
Speaker 1: I'm very under the hood of exactly how their products
Speaker 1: are made and sourced. And for folks who aren't aware,
Speaker 1: AG is like a green that you you know, just
Speaker 1: mix in with water. I drink it every morning.
Speaker 2: The ones of the podcast are they okay?
Speaker 1: Cool? And my approach to that is, if you buy
Speaker 1: the thesis that we need to be having x amount
Speaker 1: of vegetables a day, and let's be clear and be transparent.
Speaker 1: I can't guarantee that that is true because we don't know.
Speaker 1: That's another example of something that the epidemiology tells us
Speaker 1: is true, but there are many confounders there. But my
Speaker 1: view is that it's better to err on the side
Speaker 1: of that's probably true than the counter. So if you
Speaker 1: buy the thesis that you need X amount of vegetable
Speaker 1: a day, I actually find it very difficult to do
Speaker 1: that without exception. There are lots of days I can,
Speaker 1: but there are enough days that I can't. So my
Speaker 1: view of a supplement like AG is it's my belt
Speaker 1: and suspender's approach. It's it's basically my way of guaranteeing
Speaker 1: that by seven o'clock in the morning, I've met my
Speaker 1: needs and then if I have a salad for lunch
Speaker 1: and dinner as well. Perfect I went a little overboard,
Speaker 1: but that's better than the reverse to me.
Speaker 3: So that's one and age specifically talking about that kind
Speaker 3: of a supplement. That's a vegetable focused supplement, that's right,
Speaker 3: not all supplements that's right, specifically focused on that specific age.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's another supplement I take, which is a probiotic. Now,
Speaker 1: no one has been a more vocal critic of the
Speaker 1: probiotic space than me. I have generally viewed it as
Speaker 1: a space that has demonstrated no efficacy despite all the
Speaker 1: intentions in the world. In the past year, I have
Speaker 1: sort of changed my take. So there was this study
Speaker 1: that came out that looked at a certain type of
Speaker 1: probiotic and noted that a certain type of bacteria in
Speaker 1: it would help with the production of then called buterrate,
Speaker 1: and this was actually helping with glucose disposal. The results
Speaker 1: of the study actually were pretty impressive. It was a
Speaker 1: relatively short study of three month study, but it demonstrated
Speaker 1: in the group that was actually taking this probiotic, and
Speaker 1: this was in a blinded randomized trial, that these patients
Speaker 1: with type two diabetes had a significant reduction in blood glucose.
Speaker 1: Even though I don't have type two diabetes, I sort
Speaker 1: of subscribe to the idea that everybody benefits from lower
Speaker 1: blood glucose, including those without diabetes. So that's a probiotic
Speaker 1: that I take. I don't have any involvement with the company.
Speaker 1: The company is called Pendulum, but I take their glucose
Speaker 1: control probiotic.
Speaker 3: Can you walk us through a bit on glucose control,
Speaker 3: because I think that's still an area that for people
Speaker 3: who are not as well informed that that's an area
Speaker 3: that I learned about probably in the last year and
Speaker 3: a half. That has changed what I eat first thing
Speaker 3: in the morning. It's changed what I'm meeting at different times.
Speaker 3: Like to me, I was just like, oh, if I
Speaker 3: need a boost of something, as long as it's a
Speaker 3: healthy sugar, it's fine. Not only to realize that, you know,
Speaker 3: causing spikes in my blood blood glucose level. So could
Speaker 3: you us through that a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, Glucose is this essential, very simple carbohydrate. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the final common pathway of most carbohydrates. There
Speaker 1: are other simple carbohydrates as well, fructose being one of them.
Speaker 1: So sugar, for example, table sugar is a is a
Speaker 1: molecule of fructose and a molecule of glucose. But glucose
Speaker 1: is the is the most abundant carbohydrate final breakdown product,
Speaker 1: and it's very highly regulated. At any point in time
Speaker 1: you're walking around with you know, if you haven't eaten
Speaker 1: that day, somewhere between four and five grams of glucose
Speaker 1: in your blood, maybe say four to six grams of
Speaker 1: glucose in your blood, which is just over a tablespoon
Speaker 1: or a teaspoon rather so tiny, tiny amount, but you're
Speaker 1: using it constantly, and therefore your liver is constantly putting
Speaker 1: more out into your circulation, ever so delicately, and the
Speaker 1: balance of that is so fine that if that level
Speaker 1: were to be just twice as much, if you were
Speaker 1: to go from one tea spoon teaspoon to two teaspoons,
Speaker 1: that would be consistent with having type two diabetes. So
Speaker 1: type two diabetes is a condition where an individual can't
Speaker 1: control the amount of glucose in their blood. This is
Speaker 1: very problematic because glucose, when it becomes too high, starts
Speaker 1: sticking to proteins, and it starts causing damage all over
Speaker 1: the place, but primarily to small blood vessels, so blood
Speaker 1: vessels in the heart, blood vessels and the kidney, in
Speaker 1: the brain, if you're if you're in the extremities of
Speaker 1: the toes. That's why people type two diabetes are more
Speaker 1: susceptible to amputations, kidney disease, heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer's disease,
Speaker 1: all of these things, anything that compromises blood flow and oxygen.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that even if you don't have
Speaker 1: type two diabetes, and that today is just defined by
Speaker 1: a threshold of average blood glucose above one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty milligrams per desolater. Even if you are not in
Speaker 1: that category, it still appears that your mortality goes down
Speaker 1: the lower your average blood glucose, so, meaning within the
Speaker 1: normal range of glucose, lower is still better. People sometimes say, well,
Speaker 1: does that just mean you know, you should never eat
Speaker 1: a food that raises blood glucose. No, that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that at all. What it means is you need
Speaker 1: to be mindful of matching your glucose consumption to your
Speaker 1: capacity to dispose of glucose. And those are factors that
Speaker 1: are of course highly impacted by how much you sleep.
Speaker 1: So sleep interruptions in sleep dramatically reduce your capacity to
Speaker 1: put glucose into your muscles, which means glucose levels get higher.
Speaker 1: It also has to do significantly with how much you
Speaker 1: exercise and how much muscle mass you have, so people
Speaker 1: can have completely different tolerances for glucose. And I think
Speaker 1: I write quite a bit about this, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: basically trying to understand your glucose tolerance level comes down
Speaker 1: to matching it with your insulin sensitivity, muscle mass, activity levels, sleep, stress,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you so much, sorry, and I cut you
Speaker 2: off from moving.
Speaker 1: That's okay. So so just to go back to this
Speaker 1: other point quickly. So, there are lots of other supplements
Speaker 1: that I think can be really valuable. I think be
Speaker 1: vita are very important, especially methlated B vitamins. Vitamin D
Speaker 1: is very important. Many people, I think don't have sufficient
Speaker 1: levels of vitamin D. I think the data on vitamin
Speaker 1: D we could do an entire podcast on that. The
Speaker 1: clinical trials looking at vitamin D levels are really poorly
Speaker 1: done clinical trials, and so I think if a person
Speaker 1: looks out at the literature and the literature says there's
Speaker 1: no evidence that vitamin D really helps, I would argue
Speaker 1: pretty strongly that those trials haven't asked the right question
Speaker 1: and weren't designed correctly. So my view is it's better
Speaker 1: to probably err on the side of caution and make
Speaker 1: sure your vitamin D is probably somewhere between about forty
Speaker 1: and sixty And if you're not achieving that through natural
Speaker 1: exposure to sunlight, which many people are not, then you're
Speaker 1: probably better off supplementing. There are a couple of other
Speaker 1: supplements I really believe in, and I think magnesium is
Speaker 1: a very important one. And I think you have to
Speaker 1: be thoughtful about the form in which you take magnesium.
Speaker 1: So you can take magnesium in a slow absorbing form
Speaker 1: or a fast absorbing form that's poorly absorbed technically, and
Speaker 1: I think we need both, right. So I think that
Speaker 1: like a poorly absorbed magnesium would be like a citrate,
Speaker 1: glyconate or oxide, and those actually really help with bowel regularity.
Speaker 1: So for anybody who's a little bit constipated or just
Speaker 1: you know, kind of needs to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more regular, we always want to have in anywhere from
Speaker 1: two to five hundred milligrams of one of those forms. Conversely,
Speaker 1: I think virtually everybody also benefits from a slow absorbing
Speaker 1: form of magnesium. The brand that I like is called
Speaker 1: slow Magaga. And I don't have any affiliation with any
Speaker 1: of these companies unless I'm disclosing it as I did
Speaker 1: with ag that Actually, you know, so most people if
Speaker 1: they notice, oh I have a little bit of cramping sometimes,
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm getting little palpitations called PVCs, sometimes
Speaker 1: those get a lot better with magnesium supplementation, so I
Speaker 1: think most people benefit from that. There's another type of
Speaker 1: magnesium that I'm a fan of, called magnesium L three
Speaker 1: and eight, which is magnesium paired to a transporter that
Speaker 1: gets the magnesium into the brain. I think there's reasonable evidence.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's incredible, but I think it's quite
Speaker 1: good that MAGNESISL three and eight is beneficial to the
Speaker 1: brain and might even have some capacity to reduce the
Speaker 1: risk of dementia. Before bed, I tend to rely on ashwagonda,
Speaker 1: which I believe you said is in there. So I
Speaker 1: take a big dose of ashwaganda and glycine, and again
Speaker 1: I take that magnesium L three and eight, and those
Speaker 1: are kind of things that I think help with reducing
Speaker 1: cortisol and making it a little easier to sleep. Then
Speaker 1: the final supplement that I do think most people benefit from,
Speaker 1: and there are probably many others, but I'm just sort
Speaker 1: of going through a few that I can think of,
Speaker 1: would be fish oil. So most people probably don't consume
Speaker 1: enough marine fat to get what I think are ideal
Speaker 1: amounts of EPA and DHA, which are two very special
Speaker 1: types of fats called omega three fatty acids and EPA
Speaker 1: and DHA. I think the balance of evidence is quite
Speaker 1: strong that they're both beneficial to the heart and the brain.
Speaker 1: EPA probably a little bit more for the heart, DHA
Speaker 1: probably a little bit more for the brain. I take
Speaker 1: a brand that I've had tested because you always want
Speaker 1: to be careful about contaminants here, and it's made by
Speaker 1: a company called Carlson's. Again, I have no affiliation with them,
Speaker 1: but I take their EPA and DHA daily as well.
Speaker 3: That's a fantastic summary for anyone who's looking. I take
Speaker 3: all those things. Yeah, you know, I think that's a
Speaker 3: brilliant summary. And I really hope everyone who's listening and watching,
Speaker 3: you know, get those checks and tests done and grab
Speaker 3: those supplements, because again, I like what you're saying that
Speaker 3: it's all about erring on the side of caution rights.
Speaker 3: It's almost like protecting yourself being safe, rather than assuming
Speaker 3: that A you get this or B it doesn't really matter,
Speaker 3: you know. Is it that we used to find these
Speaker 3: supplements in other forms before or as humans? If we
Speaker 3: always ignored this and now we've suddenly figured it out,
Speaker 3: or has our lifestyle just got so stressful and intense
Speaker 3: that we're needing more of all of this to to
Speaker 3: support the pace at which we're moving.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I do think that the supplement
Speaker 1: world is such a slippery, dirty world that I always
Speaker 1: want to throw out a disclaimer, which is when I
Speaker 1: talk about these things, I'm also very diligent about the
Speaker 1: brands that I buy, So again, I have no affiliation
Speaker 1: with any of these entities, but having looked at third
Speaker 1: party testing, I find the brand Jerro Jarrow the brand
Speaker 1: Pure Encapsulations to be two of the most reputable companies
Speaker 1: out there. So I'm basically always going to try to
Speaker 1: buy from them if I can, even if I'm paying
Speaker 1: a little bit of a premium. Your question is a
Speaker 1: very good one, and I don't know how much you've
Speaker 1: paid attention to kind of the field of regenerative agriculture,
Speaker 1: but it's a topic that interests me quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and the more I've read about it, the more I've
Speaker 1: come to realize that I actually think part of the
Speaker 1: problem is our food today is far less nutrient dense
Speaker 1: than it once was, and so I do think that
Speaker 1: many of us don't get the same quantity and density
Speaker 1: of nutrients today that we did for the same caloric intake,
Speaker 1: say fifty years ago. And the proponents of regenerative agriculture
Speaker 1: would argue that a big part of that has to
Speaker 1: do with soil health. So as the health of the
Speaker 1: soil has deteriorated with more tillage, more fertilizers, less crop rotation,
Speaker 1: all of these things, the net result of that is
Speaker 1: the plants themselves are less healthy. So when you're eating
Speaker 1: a plant, you're getting less nutrient density. And of course
Speaker 1: when you're eating meat if you're an omnivore, the meat
Speaker 1: is also less healthy and less nutrient dense because it's
Speaker 1: eating a less nutrient dense plant, which is growing in
Speaker 1: a less nutrient dense soil. And so the old adage
Speaker 1: that you know, it's hard to be healthier than the
Speaker 1: animal you eat, which can't be much healthier than the
Speaker 1: plant it eats, which can't be much healthier than the
Speaker 1: soil it grows in, brings this whole thing full circle.
Speaker 1: And so I suspect that that is a pretty significant
Speaker 1: role in it. Coupled with the changes in our lifestyle. Right,
Speaker 1: so many of us would have got sufficient vitamin D,
Speaker 1: for example, in the past because we would have been
Speaker 1: outside more, and we would have been active more, and
Speaker 1: you know today we aren't.
Speaker 3: As one example, are you seeing the rise of more
Speaker 3: regenerative farming and places to buy regenerative vegetables.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, I mean yeah, no, it absolutely is and
Speaker 1: and there there, there are, there are some great places,
Speaker 1: you know. Certainly, one of my sincere hopes is that
Speaker 1: you know, we see we see a greater and greater
Speaker 1: movement to scale this because I do think regenerative agriculture
Speaker 1: is not only what I think of as one of
Speaker 1: the most important ways in which we can improve human
Speaker 1: health through nutrition, but but for folks who are also
Speaker 1: concerned with with climate change and the effects of anthropogenic
Speaker 1: CO two, regenerative agriculture probably has more potential to attenuate
Speaker 1: that than anything else, inclusive of electrifying the entire transperrotation grid.
Speaker 1: And that's a pretty bold statement.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: It's very bord and this so I want to dive
Speaker 3: into it too, Like what gives you confidence to make
Speaker 3: that bold stimula? What have you seen that has given
Speaker 3: you that conviction.
Speaker 1: It really comes down to understanding the capacity for plants
Speaker 1: to fixate carbon. I'm sure everybody understands, you know, the
Speaker 1: basics of how how CO two works, right, So, why
Speaker 1: why is there a concern with the combustion of fossil
Speaker 1: fuels Because when you're combusting a fossil fuel, whether it
Speaker 1: be coal or natural gas, you're taking carbon that was
Speaker 1: sequestered billions of years ago in the form of fossilized
Speaker 1: you know, organic matter, and you're now liberating that carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide out. So how do we get carbon dioxide back
Speaker 1: in the system? Well, plants do that. So plants have
Speaker 1: a capacity to do something that no animal does, which
Speaker 1: is they fixate carbon. So they fix Fixing carbon literally
Speaker 1: is just the chemical process of taking a carbon out
Speaker 1: of the out of CO two and attaching it to
Speaker 1: another hydrocarbon. The way that regenerative agriculture works is by
Speaker 1: storing more and more CO two and carbon specifically in
Speaker 1: the soil. So right now, the way conventional agriculture works,
Speaker 1: when you're constantly tilling the soil, you're leeching carbon out
Speaker 1: of the soil. And so you know, when you look
Speaker 1: at the mathematical models that look at how much carbon
Speaker 1: could be brought back into the ground and sequestered ie
Speaker 1: brought out of the atmosphere, it's more significant than the
Speaker 1: carbon that's being put out through the combustion of fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: The reason I'm particularly excited about that is you're basically
Speaker 1: getting two winds for the price of one, right, so
Speaker 1: you're reducing atmospheric CO two, but doing so in a
Speaker 1: manner that's also very positive for our health because in
Speaker 1: doing that, you're increasing the soil health and by extension,
Speaker 1: than the nutrient density of plants and ultimately animals and ourselves.
Speaker 3: What's your take on regender agriculture versus lab produced.
Speaker 1: I have yet to see any evidence that laboratory produced
Speaker 1: meats and vegetables can be done really well at scale,
Speaker 1: or that they are particularly certainly any more viable in
Speaker 1: terms of the nutrient density. I think in part it
Speaker 1: comes down to the complexity of soil. There's a great
Speaker 1: book I would recommend for people who want to go
Speaker 1: really deep on this. I believe. The book is called
Speaker 1: What Your Food Ate, and it's a wonderful book. It's
Speaker 1: a bit of a deep dive. It's a nerdy book,
Speaker 1: it's not light reading, and they go into incredible detail.
Speaker 2: About David Montgomery.
Speaker 1: Yes, and there's another author as well, Afe and Beekley yep,
Speaker 1: once you get under the hood of how complex soil is.
Speaker 1: So for example, many people talk about the human gut biome,
Speaker 1: and you know, we talked a minutes ago about probiotics, right, Well,
Speaker 1: the human gut biome is really complicated, and we haven't
Speaker 1: figured out a way to perfectly model it. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe we're just getting to the point where we can
Speaker 1: figure out, if we add a little bit more of
Speaker 1: one bacteria, can it make a difference in the direction
Speaker 1: that this thing goes. Well, it turns out that soil
Speaker 1: is probably even more biodiverse and complicated than the bacteria
Speaker 1: in our gut. And so again, I just think it's
Speaker 1: very difficult for us to sort of play super farmer
Speaker 1: and think that we can kind of replicate what nature
Speaker 1: has figured out for you know, literally a billion years.
Speaker 3: Well, so, yeah, so your understanding is actually that we
Speaker 3: don't know enough about the complexity of the soil, which
Speaker 3: is actually what is impacting the quality of the vegetable
Speaker 3: or hence the all the way the chain. Hence, even
Speaker 3: if we can produce a vegetable or meat in a lab,
Speaker 3: it won't have that same.
Speaker 1: That that's my take on it, which says nothing about
Speaker 1: which says nothing. By the way, about the scale factor.
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, scale matters,
Speaker 1: like I mean food. I think it's safe to say
Speaker 1: agriculture is the second largest industry in the world just
Speaker 1: in terms of like the magnitude of what it takes.
Speaker 1: You have to have solutions that work broadly, and by
Speaker 1: the way, I think that's still There are certainly proponents
Speaker 1: of regenerative egg who say it can be scaled, but
Speaker 1: I think that's an open question.
Speaker 2: Still regenerative agricultures.
Speaker 1: Can it be scaled to meet the needs of the
Speaker 1: entire world?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are the challenges with scaling that?
Speaker 1: It's a totally different infrastructure too, truthfully, right, it's not
Speaker 1: going to rely on as much automation, so for example,
Speaker 1: like you're not going to be able to rely you know.
Speaker 1: So one of the hallmarks of regeneraveagg is you're not
Speaker 1: using fertilizer, so you're not using the nitrogen of a fertilizer,
Speaker 1: you're actually using the nitrogen of the animals. Another one
Speaker 1: is you're not using pesticides, so you're crop rotating instead
Speaker 1: of using pesticides and allowing you know, the crops themselves
Speaker 1: to generate resistance by cycling them and not letting the
Speaker 1: pests get used to the same crop, not to you know,
Speaker 1: belabor the point, but all of a sudden, the industry
Speaker 1: that is now dominant by the pioneers, the Cargills, the
Speaker 1: Monsantos of the world, it's going to have to look
Speaker 1: very different. So I think that's a big challenge, is
Speaker 1: going from big to little and then scaling little, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Where are the places, like if people are fascinated to
Speaker 3: have you been out to any regenerative agriculture farms?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's one outside of Austin. There's actually
Speaker 1: one here in California.
Speaker 2: So it don't be many.
Speaker 1: I mean there's so the one out in California is
Speaker 1: called there's a documentary made about it called I think
Speaker 1: the documentary is called Biggest Little Farm. It's not too
Speaker 1: far from here, by the way, and my kids were
Speaker 1: obsessed with this, so we like watch this documentary like
Speaker 1: I don't know, fifteen times, but you'll get a sense
Speaker 1: of what it looks like. But yes, no, I mean
Speaker 1: I think everybody can find regenerative farms near them, So
Speaker 1: really it's just a question of helping farmers understand why
Speaker 1: ultimately it is in their best interest to do this,
Speaker 1: so economically it makes more sense. But look, it's going
Speaker 1: to require the government completely changing incentive structures and changing
Speaker 1: the way they subsidize certain crops today. It's a big shift.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What's your take on people trying to create little farms
Speaker 3: in their home, like they're like mini growing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's wonderful. I think
Speaker 1: if you can grow your own vegetables, I mean, we
Speaker 1: have a vegetable garden, and there's no question that the
Speaker 1: vegetables we grow taste infinitely better than anything we're going
Speaker 1: to buy at the grocery store.
Speaker 3: And how do you take care of the soil in
Speaker 3: your area? You're saying because it's untouched, it naturally.
Speaker 1: Has Yeah, I mean we compost our own stuff, so
Speaker 1: but it's you know, look, it's not even big enough
Speaker 1: to completely feed us. So you know, there's work that
Speaker 1: goes into this. And I have friends that do have
Speaker 1: the time and effort to at least, you know, support
Speaker 1: themselves fully.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: You know. My wife's really my wife's really big on that.
Speaker 3: She wants to build a little vegetable garden on the
Speaker 3: back right now in the same way, because that's one
Speaker 3: of her core beliefs as well.
Speaker 1: So just this past weekend, I was I had to
Speaker 1: put all this chicken wire around the fence where our
Speaker 1: garden is because these squirrels are figuring out a way
Speaker 1: to get under the fence and they're like eating all
Speaker 1: the tomatoes and the peppers and stuff. And it's like
Speaker 1: my son who's eight, this is his project, and it
Speaker 1: just drives them nuts when the squirrels are getting them.
Speaker 2: So what a great age to like get connected.
Speaker 1: So it's so great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the land and to the soil into growing.
Speaker 3: That's so beautiful.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, We've had a gopher problem for years here and
Speaker 3: it's like it's always ruining the lawn and I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: if I plant vegetables here, those vegetables are going to
Speaker 3: be gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You have to you have to be smart about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, incredible.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure that everyone knows the book
Speaker 3: dives into cancer Alzheimer's. We talked about we were going
Speaker 3: to dive into exercise in a second. We talked about diet,
Speaker 3: you know, eating less, eating patterns. I want to make
Speaker 3: sure because I don't want to either repeat things that
Speaker 3: are already in the book or repeat things you've talked
Speaker 3: about in other interviews, and so I just want everyone
Speaker 3: who's listening to know that that you know, it dives
Speaker 3: into multiple key diseases that were all struggling with today
Speaker 3: and the biggest challenges. One thing I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: to you about, which I think you really wonderfully highlighted,
Speaker 3: was this challenge between physical health and emotional health. And
Speaker 3: you talk about the need for prioritizing emotional health as well,
Speaker 3: and I've found that so much of my subtlely emotional
Speaker 3: health was so based on physical health. So what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is I found at one point in
Speaker 3: doing all of my checks and tests that and by
Speaker 3: the way I was doing I was functioning at like
Speaker 3: a really optimal level. I was just feeling tired, and
Speaker 3: when we did my test, we found that my vitamin
Speaker 3: D was at a ten. This was around two three
Speaker 3: years ago, and I realized the majority of the challenges
Speaker 3: I was having was because I was sleeping. We rented
Speaker 3: a home during COVID. We moved from our apartment, and
Speaker 3: when we rented this space, I never slept well in
Speaker 3: that space because it was just the most like noisy,
Speaker 3: loud area, because there were it was it was in
Speaker 3: the middle of too many animals, too many things at night,
Speaker 3: like going through the floorboards, like it was an old,
Speaker 3: old space, and so there was like I was waking
Speaker 3: up multiple times, which I don't usually go through. And
Speaker 3: so I started to find that a lot of my
Speaker 3: emotional challenges, whether it's fatigue, irritability, you know, stress, because
Speaker 3: of that environment was causing emotional challenges. But it was
Speaker 3: actually all coming from a physical space, if that makes
Speaker 3: sense for sure. And I think so often these days,
Speaker 3: I find a lot of us are just trying to
Speaker 3: solve everything in our mind rather than recognizing that often
Speaker 3: it's a chemical, it's biological, it's it's physical. So I
Speaker 3: want to just point that out to people because I
Speaker 3: think a lot of us are like I could have
Speaker 3: done anything to change. I was working out, I was
Speaker 3: trying to sleep right, I was doing everything I possibly could,
Speaker 3: but because my vitamin D was at a level ten,
Speaker 3: there's not much you can do. And instead of apart
Speaker 3: from taking vitamin D supplements, how where are you saying
Speaker 3: this relationship? Where are you seeing this relationship between emotional
Speaker 3: health and physical health.
Speaker 1: Well, they're absolutely linked. And you know, I think that
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've observed, you know, my
Speaker 1: therapists will always ask me at the beginning of a session,
Speaker 1: is how are you doing physically? So are you in pain? Right?
Speaker 1: Is you know, is your shoulder bugging you? Is your
Speaker 1: back bugging you? Do you have like an ulcer in
Speaker 1: your mouth or something like like literally something like that,
Speaker 1: How are you rested? And how much stress are you under?
Speaker 1: And the reason I think is those things exacerbate vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: that we have on the emotional side, on the mental side.
Speaker 1: So if you take an individual in two the same
Speaker 1: individual in two parallel universes, but in one situation, they
Speaker 1: have lots of issues going on physically, right, so they're
Speaker 1: not well rested, their vitamin D is low, they're in pain.
Speaker 1: And you have another individual for which everything is physically
Speaker 1: firing on all cylinders, and you present them with the
Speaker 1: same emotional distress, You're going to see a completely different response.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of why I think it does
Speaker 1: matter to keep your physical health in order to optimize
Speaker 1: your emotional health. But I would also argue that you
Speaker 1: could still have your physical health in perfect order and
Speaker 1: not becoming close to addressing your emotional health.
Speaker 3: When you use the term emotional health, what does that
Speaker 3: constitute for you?
Speaker 1: I try to distinguish it from mental health, right, I
Speaker 1: think mental health is a subset of emotional health, but
Speaker 1: it's the perhaps the more medicalized piece of it. So
Speaker 1: in medicine we use something called the DSM, the Diagnostic
Speaker 1: and Statistical Manual. I think we're in version five, and
Speaker 1: that's the one that codifies psychiatric illnesses, right, everything from depression, anxiety,
Speaker 1: different personality disorders and all sorts of things like that.
Speaker 1: And those things clearly matter, But I'm talking about something
Speaker 1: that is applicable to everyone, whereas those things might only
Speaker 1: be applicable to people who would meet diagnostic criteria. So
Speaker 1: emotional health, in the sense the way I think about it,
Speaker 1: kind of encompasses your relationships with other people, your sense
Speaker 1: of purpose, fulfillment, happiness, joy, spontaneity, all of these things
Speaker 1: that every human should be thinking about, because every human
Speaker 1: is a part of those things. In my case, you know.
Speaker 1: So the book is written basically at seventeen chapters. Sixteen
Speaker 1: of the chapters are me, you know, writing about it
Speaker 1: as the doctor, the scientist. And then the last chapter,
Speaker 1: which is about emotional health, is me actually just writing
Speaker 1: about my personal experience and my own well transformation, I
Speaker 1: think would be an understatement. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: the most important lesson for me in the past decade
Speaker 1: has been that all the health stuff that makes up
Speaker 1: most of that book, how do you reduce your odds
Speaker 1: of getting cancer? How do you reduce your odds of
Speaker 1: getting heart disease, Alzheimer's disease? How do you make sure
Speaker 1: your muscles work better? In the la last decade of
Speaker 1: you know, all those things, they're very important. But if
Speaker 1: you're miserable, none of it matters. Right, If your relationships suck,
Speaker 1: none of it matters. And I can't state that enough.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't have understood that a decade ago. You know,
Speaker 1: I had to personally experience things going really wrong. I
Speaker 1: had to nearly lose everything to realize I've really missed
Speaker 1: the plot here and if I don't get this stuff addressed,
Speaker 1: then the rest of this outliving doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: What was the wake up quote for you or what
Speaker 2: was the I mean?
Speaker 1: I think you know it was essentially almost losing my family, right,
Speaker 1: it was just being so selfish and so such an
Speaker 1: awful person that, you know, I finally woke up and
Speaker 1: realized how much I was hurting everybody around me, and
Speaker 1: I was confronted with that, and confronted with the reality
Speaker 1: that I had no choice but to go away and
Speaker 1: get help to sort of address my own reasons for
Speaker 1: why my coping mechanisms were so negative.
Speaker 3: What made you so selfish and awful? Like, where did
Speaker 3: that come from?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, again, at the time, I had no clue.
Speaker 1: But also at the time, I don't think I was
Speaker 1: even privy to understanding what I was doing. But obviously
Speaker 1: as I as I talk about in the chapter, and
Speaker 1: I what I basically learned is I think a lot
Speaker 1: of my adaptations had to do with, you know, certain
Speaker 1: things in my childhood, some of which were, you know,
Speaker 1: I describe as kind of big T trauma and some
Speaker 1: of which are frankly just little TA trauma. But collectively
Speaker 1: they just produced a response, an adaptation. I talk about
Speaker 1: this sort of model of trauma where wounded children become
Speaker 1: adaptive children, and adaptive children are there to protect the
Speaker 1: wounded children. And I think that's a remarkable trait of
Speaker 1: us as humans, right, we are very resilient. The problem
Speaker 1: is that a lot of those adaptations become maladaptive in
Speaker 1: adult life. And I think that's really what I was
Speaker 1: dealing with, was so many of my adaptations, you know,
Speaker 1: for example, control, drive, perfection, anger, All of those things
Speaker 1: served me quite well as a child, but as a
Speaker 1: husband and as a father, they were not serving me
Speaker 1: well anymore. And all of the good that came from
Speaker 1: those adaptations, for example, a strong work ethic, a desire
Speaker 1: to do good, was more being done for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1: It was I'll show them, I will you know, I
Speaker 1: will matter, my self esteem will be based on performance,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I think all of that had to
Speaker 1: be turned on its head. For me. That was sort
Speaker 1: of my journey, was learning how to undo all of
Speaker 1: the maladaptive behaviors, to try to keep the good parts
Speaker 1: of the adaptation and then shed the harmful ones.
Speaker 3: Why do you think it takes us? Thank you for sharing,
Speaker 3: by the way, and I know you go into a
Speaker 3: more depth in the book, and I find this fascinating,
Speaker 3: and I think people I'm so happy that you address it,
Speaker 3: because I think people find it especially fascinating From coming
Speaker 3: from you, because often they've just seen as such separate
Speaker 3: things and separate pursuits, but for you to unify in
Speaker 3: them is really really interesting. Why do you think it
Speaker 3: takes so many of us so long to address the
Speaker 3: very root cause of so much of our problems? And
Speaker 3: you partly covered it there that some of these things
Speaker 3: become superpowers in the material world, like they're phenomenal at
Speaker 3: you know, manipulating the outside world through control and perfectionism, etc.
Speaker 3: But then in the inner world and the family tends
Speaker 3: to suffer from that, Why does it take us so
Speaker 3: long to look backwards almost to look forwards in both
Speaker 3: our genetic background and are also genetic trauma in that sense.
Speaker 1: I don't think we want to uncover painful things less
Speaker 1: the pain that we're confronting is greater than the pain
Speaker 1: we're going to encounter by doing so. That's probably my
Speaker 1: simplest thought as to why. I just think that, like,
Speaker 1: how many people without ever having experienced dental pain would
Speaker 1: go to the dentist right like you do as a kid,
Speaker 1: because you're sort of told. But when I think about now,
Speaker 1: like why do I put so much effort into taking
Speaker 1: care of my teeth? It's because I've learned how miserable
Speaker 1: it is when I don't. I think, until you experience
Speaker 1: enough discomfort in the present, and in my case that
Speaker 1: came through the circumstances. I write about the pain of
Speaker 1: turning around and going back and exploring what happened and why,
Speaker 1: and then embarking on the corrective steps and learning a
Speaker 1: whole new language and a whole new set of skills.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's in chemistry we call that the activation energy.
Speaker 1: You have a chemical reaction, right, so you know every
Speaker 1: chemical reaction has to overcome some sort of activation energy,
Speaker 1: and the higher that activation energy, the less likely that
Speaker 1: reaction is to take place. So enzymes, which people have
Speaker 1: heard what's an enzyme? Do an enzyme or a catalyst
Speaker 1: will make that reaction more likely. It lowers that barrier
Speaker 1: to activation. So I think what we need in our
Speaker 1: life are catalysts. We need something, and unfortunately, I think
Speaker 1: sometimes it often has to be painful a loss to
Speaker 1: force us to do that. I make a point when
Speaker 1: I showed up in the first rehab place I went to,
Speaker 1: there was this There's a woman that I met there
Speaker 1: who could sort of see from the look on my
Speaker 1: face that I wasn't happy to be there. She just
Speaker 1: said to me in a manner that was just so perfect.
Speaker 1: She said, Hey, nobody shows up here on a winning streak.
Speaker 1: This is just one hundred percent true.
Speaker 3: How did you help the people around you that you
Speaker 3: cared about be patient as you went through your own
Speaker 3: gen Because I feel like it's really interesting when we
Speaker 3: are trying to solve our own wounds and pain, it's
Speaker 3: already so hard. But because we've taken on responsibilities or commitments,
Speaker 3: whether that be in a marriage or as a parent,
Speaker 3: or even as a CEO or a boss or whatever
Speaker 3: it may be, it's like, all of a sudden, you
Speaker 3: have so many other commitments that you had taken on
Speaker 3: even before you realized you had to work on yourself.
Speaker 3: Did you find yourself helping them while you helped yourself
Speaker 3: to be around and be supportive as opposed to like
Speaker 3: tap out and say, you know what, we don't want
Speaker 3: to be around? Because I think we often look at like,
Speaker 3: how are people helping us in our time of struggle?
Speaker 3: But sometimes it's like we already committed to them, and
Speaker 3: then we realize that does that make any sense?
Speaker 1: It makes a ton of sense, And I will tell you.
Speaker 1: I think it just speaks to how fortunate I am
Speaker 1: and perhaps why I feel I have an obligation to
Speaker 1: talk about it, which is I just think I was
Speaker 1: really lucky and that the people around me stood by
Speaker 1: me and let me go through this and gave me
Speaker 1: the chance to do it and stood by me because
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think many people would have. I really,
Speaker 1: you know, I've said this to my wife many times.
Speaker 1: I describe her as like, you know, sort of hall
Speaker 1: of fame wife who didn't really need to stick by me.
Speaker 1: I think she had enough reasons to leave and take
Speaker 1: my kids away and just say to hell with that guy,
Speaker 1: and that she didn't. I will forever pay that forward.
Speaker 1: And I think the same is true of people that
Speaker 1: I worked with who knew I was struggling. I think,
Speaker 1: deep down believed that I was not a bad person.
Speaker 1: I was a good person who did very bad things,
Speaker 1: and that I deserved another chance. I wish I could
Speaker 1: say I was supporting them on that journey, but I
Speaker 1: don't think I was. I think I was just reeling
Speaker 1: in pain and lucky that they stood by me.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for sharing that. That's that really hit me.
Speaker 3: As you know, don't expect people to catch you when
Speaker 3: you're falling, but if they stand by you, never let
Speaker 3: them leave you aside, because I think most of us could,
Speaker 3: probably the fortunate ones attest to that. I would say
Speaker 3: that about my wife too, I'd say that about my parents.
Speaker 3: I'd say that about the people that I'm surrounded by,
Speaker 3: that sometimes I haven't had the capacity to help them
Speaker 3: as I help myself, even though I intend to. But
Speaker 3: the problem sometimes is we do the other extreme, where
Speaker 3: we demand.
Speaker 2: Them to help us. That's the balance.
Speaker 3: It's like the gratitude that you're displaying right now is
Speaker 3: actually like the right, I think a wonderful balance, because
Speaker 3: we do either all We either go I'm going to
Speaker 3: solve this myself and I don't need anyone, or I
Speaker 3: want my family to solve my problems for me, And
Speaker 3: like we live in one of those extremes, and you're
Speaker 3: actually saying, well, I had to help myself. I'd to
Speaker 3: admit I didn't have the capacity to help them at
Speaker 3: the time. But now I'm just grateful and I'm humbled
Speaker 3: by the fact that they stayed here. Like there's some
Speaker 3: beauty to that and that that really resonates.
Speaker 1: It's probably four years after one of the events that
Speaker 1: I write about in this book, which was when my
Speaker 1: son almost died. I was talking to Esther Parrel and
Speaker 1: I was just saying, I don't think I could ever
Speaker 1: forgive myself for what I did. And she said, that's okay.
Speaker 1: I think it's okay that you remember this for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. I think there's a degree of
Speaker 1: humility you need to carry with you forever. And I
Speaker 1: think that was a really wise thing to say, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think it would have been easy to have said no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you should just forget about this and move on. But
Speaker 1: she's like, no, you should remember this forever. This is
Speaker 1: the humility you need to remember. And she described it
Speaker 1: in a very eloquent way, which was you need to
Speaker 1: understand that there's a monster in you and he's never
Speaker 1: going to go away. I'm confident you will keep him
Speaker 1: in the corner for the rest of his life. But
Speaker 1: don't ever take an eye off him. Yeah, and don't
Speaker 1: ever think that just because you're better now, you're better
Speaker 1: for life. This is a constant process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And remembering that there's a monster in you, but
Speaker 3: you are not that monster.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, he's over in the corner, and you
Speaker 1: have the you are the one in charge of whether
Speaker 1: he stays in that corner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it reminds me. I remember in my early experience
Speaker 3: of living as a monk. I said to one of
Speaker 3: my monk teachers, I said, I just feel like I'll
Speaker 3: never overcome my ego, Like it just is too big,
Speaker 3: Like there's two mutch to deal with. And it's not
Speaker 3: that it's coming out in an externally gross way that
Speaker 3: it's manifesting. But I know it's there. You know, we've
Speaker 3: trained in self awareness and I can see it. And
Speaker 3: he said to me, yeah, it's always going to be
Speaker 3: there because it's not going anywhere, And he said, it
Speaker 3: will always act as your anchor and ground you and
Speaker 3: humble you even when you saw to new heights or
Speaker 3: whatever else your life brings to you. That you knowing
Speaker 3: that it's there is actually what will help you, right,
Speaker 3: you know, stay grounded, which is such a beautiful reminder
Speaker 3: as opposed to like ego death and we're going to
Speaker 3: crush it in. It's interesting with health too, right, with
Speaker 3: emotional health and physical health. That from what you said,
Speaker 3: the first thing you said today was you know there
Speaker 3: are certain things from the moment you're born that that's it.
Speaker 3: It's already going in the wrong direction, and we often
Speaker 3: think of like, how do I end this? So how
Speaker 3: do I start this? How do I finish this? And
Speaker 3: it's like, well, most things are just in motion. They're
Speaker 3: not beginning or ending, they're just already happening. And as
Speaker 3: you said earlier, we're trying to slow it down, or
Speaker 3: we're trying to be aware of it, or we're trying
Speaker 3: to monitor it. When you were speaking about your family
Speaker 3: there and you were talking about that emotional wellbeing, there
Speaker 3: was something that came to mind. There were these two
Speaker 3: beautiful words you used, which one of them is used
Speaker 3: a lot, but one of them not so much. We
Speaker 3: talked about joy and spontaneity. And I love the word spontaneity.
Speaker 3: I think it's not used enough when we talk about
Speaker 3: emotional health. Joy is used. But the challenge I find
Speaker 3: today when I'm talking to people is that we're so
Speaker 3: overexposed to it's whether chemically we're talking about dopamine or
Speaker 3: whether we're just talking about like fun, pleasure, instant gratification,
Speaker 3: which we've talked about for such a long time that
Speaker 3: every thing feels boring almost it's hard for people to
Speaker 3: get to a state of joy or spontaneity. I find
Speaker 3: that a lot of people have a sense of like, well,
Speaker 3: what's there to look forward to? It like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: nothing's that great, It's okay, like you know, whereas before
Speaker 3: and now it's like it feels like you've got to
Speaker 3: up the.
Speaker 2: Results so hard.
Speaker 3: And the problem is even when you up it, like
Speaker 3: you're thinking that happiness is in Europe on that yacht, right,
Speaker 3: and it's like, even if you got there, it won't
Speaker 3: actually even live up to that experience that you put
Speaker 3: in your mind, because it was never about the physical
Speaker 3: manifestation of it. It was it was the idea that
Speaker 3: you've overexposed yourself to so much pleasure that now even
Speaker 3: the highest pleasures don't satisfy or suffice. How do we
Speaker 3: work on that? Like, what is the health and emotional
Speaker 3: version of approaching that problem?
Speaker 1: I wish I knew? I mean, and I think you're
Speaker 1: addressing one of the most important questions. And this is
Speaker 1: something I really struggle with because you know, for me,
Speaker 1: I and I was just talking about this with someone
Speaker 1: earlier today. I think about the next decade of my
Speaker 1: life this amazing time where I get to be with
Speaker 1: my kids the most. Because you know, as you're probably aware,
Speaker 1: the data are pretty clear that once your kids leave
Speaker 1: for college, the amount of time you will get to
Speaker 1: spend with them is quite small. I think it works
Speaker 1: out to basically, you have a total of nineteen years
Speaker 1: with your kids, eighteen of which occur until they leave
Speaker 1: for college, and then one year is the sum total
Speaker 1: of time you will spend with your kids the rest
Speaker 1: of your life on average. So I look at that
Speaker 1: and I think I regret the time I've wasted so far, right,
Speaker 1: But so that's the stuff I talk about, and now
Speaker 1: I'm here in the future, I think, Wow, the greatest
Speaker 1: source of joy I really experience is with my family. That,
Speaker 1: to me is what spontaneity is. Right. Spontaneity for me
Speaker 1: is an important and the reason I brought it up
Speaker 1: is I'm a very rigid person by nature. Like part
Speaker 1: of control for me is rigidity. Deviating from my plan
Speaker 1: is a very hard thing to do, but I also
Speaker 1: realize it's a very important thing to do. So, like
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of guy who makes lists on weekends
Speaker 1: me too, right, Like there's just like there's a list
Speaker 1: of twelve things that have to be done on Saturday
Speaker 1: and eight things that have to be done on Sunday.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine that that rigidity takes any spontaneity
Speaker 1: out of life. And one of the great things I've
Speaker 1: learned is how to screw the list sometimes. The other day,
Speaker 1: when I went to get you know, I had to
Speaker 1: go to home depot to get all the chicken wire
Speaker 1: to do the thing like that wasn't on the list
Speaker 1: that day, but I could see that my son was
Speaker 1: upset that the squirrels were eating his tomatoes, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what I'm supposed to be doing, X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z, let's go to home depot.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think interestingly anyone who does that, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: is everybody listening to this at some point, can experience
Speaker 1: that those are probably the things that bring more joy
Speaker 1: than the yacht and Abiza. It doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: should never go on the yacht in a Biza. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it just means that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it just means that don't dismiss the stuff
Speaker 1: that's right in front of you. And again, for most people,
Speaker 1: I really do believe connection is that thing like just
Speaker 1: having intimate connection with friends and family probably provides more
Speaker 1: of that than any of these other kind of material things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think what you're saying is actually true.
Speaker 3: And I want to clarify that point too, that I
Speaker 3: actually think that when you are not missing the simple
Speaker 3: things that are right in front of you, then when
Speaker 3: the big material thing is right in front of you,
Speaker 3: you won't miss that either. That's the point I believe, Like,
Speaker 3: I think that if someone is grateful for where they're
Speaker 3: at and what they see and what they experience, and
Speaker 3: are able to immerse themselves in it, then the same
Speaker 3: happens on vacation, the same happens on the yacht as
Speaker 3: are thought exper like. The idea is is that the
Speaker 3: ability to experience a flower as a thought experiment in
Speaker 3: the most immersive way allows you to experience a garden,
Speaker 3: which allows you to experience a forest, which allows you
Speaker 3: know it's it's that you can't really fully experience the
Speaker 3: forest if you didn't know how to experience a leaf.
Speaker 3: That idea of that much immersed and I've and I've
Speaker 3: personally experienced both the presence and absence of those experiences
Speaker 3: where sometimes I'm walking up and down here or doing
Speaker 3: my morning hike and you completely miss the view because
Speaker 3: you're on your phone, or even if your phone's not there,
Speaker 3: you're thinking about something and then and then second you
Speaker 3: look up and you're, oh, wait a minute, like this
Speaker 3: was right there. And so I think we all experience
Speaker 3: presence and absence, and I found that beautiful. We think
Speaker 3: beautiful things will make us more presence, but actually will
Speaker 3: be absent even in beautiful things if you're not present
Speaker 3: for the small things. And I've seen that again and
Speaker 3: again and again in your example, and I'm just I'm
Speaker 3: only picking at this because I think there's so much
Speaker 3: lived experience and what you're saying, and the scientific backbone
Speaker 3: helps too. It's like, how have you also not ended up?
Speaker 3: Because it sounds like your kids and your family is
Speaker 3: just so important to you, which is beautiful, and I
Speaker 3: think that's true for so many people. But again, I
Speaker 3: find that a lot of the people that I'm talking
Speaker 3: to are living at the other extreme where they're like, Jay,
Speaker 3: I am so giving in to everything.
Speaker 2: My kids want to do, what my family wants to do.
Speaker 3: That I don't even have any of my own habits
Speaker 3: and disciplines. Right Like for you going to get Chicken
Speaker 3: Wire was a spontaneous moment of love for your son
Speaker 3: who's worried about this project that he loves, Whereas for
Speaker 3: some people, all they're living in is not spontaneity, but
Speaker 3: in urgency, and then they're not getting I was speaking
Speaker 3: to a friend the other day and they were telling me, Jay,
Speaker 3: I wake up at six am, but what happened? And
Speaker 3: then I was kind of walking through their schedule with
Speaker 3: them for the day and helping them map habits, and
Speaker 3: they were like, I don't know why. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: when do you start cooking lunch for example that they
Speaker 3: as part of their day they have to do. And
Speaker 3: they were like twelve. And I was like, so what
Speaker 3: happens between six am and twelve noon? They're like I
Speaker 3: don't know. And I was like, what do you mean,
Speaker 3: Like you don't know, Like that's six hours a time.
Speaker 3: Where does it go? And then they were like emails,
Speaker 3: phone calls, random people, call random things up and it's
Speaker 3: all like I'm like, Wow, you're waking up pretty early,
Speaker 3: which is amazing, but now all of that six hours
Speaker 3: is just lost in kind of moving. How have you
Speaker 3: found that balance between like I love my children, I
Speaker 3: want to be there, but I also need to do
Speaker 3: everything I say in this book, which takes time and energy.
Speaker 1: I don't want to necessarily use myself as an example
Speaker 1: because I also realize like I have some really good
Speaker 1: things going for me, which is I have like an
Speaker 1: amazing spouse, and I have an amazing team and all
Speaker 1: of these things. But what everyone around me has figured
Speaker 1: out is if you want to get the best out
Speaker 1: of me as a husband, as a father, as a friend,
Speaker 1: as a boss, as a colleague, whatever it is, if
Speaker 1: you want the best version of Peter, he also has
Speaker 1: to be well rested, be eating well, he has to
Speaker 1: be exercising, he has to be doing the things that
Speaker 1: he has to do every day for his mental health.
Speaker 1: I am actually quite structured when it comes to that stuff,
Speaker 1: so I'm very routined with how I do things. So
Speaker 1: I do not take a single call or meeting, with
Speaker 1: very rare exceptions once a month. There's an exception to
Speaker 1: this rule. Before eleven am. I am scheduled without a
Speaker 1: break from eleven to five every single day, So I
Speaker 1: have six hours of pure scheduled that I consider that
Speaker 1: not my time, that's my patient's time, that's my team's time.
Speaker 1: That's me giving thirty hours a week to everybody. I
Speaker 1: get up at about six. From six to eleven is
Speaker 1: really sacred time. So six to seven is just coffee
Speaker 1: with my wife and playing with the kids. So my daughter,
Speaker 1: of course, no, she's still sleeping, but the boys we're
Speaker 1: playing board games, doing puzzles, having coffee, doing whatever. From
Speaker 1: seven to eight is work, Just get the emails done,
Speaker 1: read whatever I need to read, et ceteratcetera. From eight
Speaker 1: to eleven is hobby plus exercise, So every day I'm
Speaker 1: either in the simulator, driving or shooting my bow and arrow,
Speaker 1: and then I'm exercising. From five till about seven is
Speaker 1: family time, so I'm usually cooking dinner, playing with the kids,
Speaker 1: going to you know, jiu jitsu, whatever it is. And
Speaker 1: then seven till ten is some combination of family time
Speaker 1: plus work. And that's where there has to be some flexibility,
Speaker 1: like how much more work do I need to do?
Speaker 1: And the price I pay for that is I have
Speaker 1: to work on weekends too, right, Why because like I'm
Speaker 1: forcing the time to be spread out, and so that
Speaker 1: means like, yeah, there's just you know, there's other things
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to make sacrifices around. But I
Speaker 1: guess my point of that is you have to kind
Speaker 1: of try to take hold of the schedule a little
Speaker 1: bit and sort of say, like, there are certain things
Speaker 1: that are non negotiable. So not exercising is a non negotiable.
Speaker 1: Not having some time with my family is a non negotiable.
Speaker 1: I rarely travel anymore. I used to travel twenty days
Speaker 1: a month. I travel two to three days a month now.
Speaker 1: Just very deliberate and conscious decisions about how I want
Speaker 1: to spend my time and the importance of, you know,
Speaker 1: taking care of my body in an effort to take
Speaker 1: care of everything else.
Speaker 3: Absolutely no, and I definitely I agree. I don't think
Speaker 3: we want to use ourselves as examples or you know,
Speaker 3: as the way to do it, because everyone's so personal.
Speaker 3: I think it's just useful understanding that that structure is
Speaker 3: needed for that spontaneity.
Speaker 1: What might be more helpful for people to understand how
Speaker 1: I communicate this with my wife. So my wife is
Speaker 1: that person who will put everybody ahead of herself. So
Speaker 1: what I have to help my wife do is realize, hey,
Speaker 1: like you need to go for a run too, because
Speaker 1: that matters a lot to you, and you need to
Speaker 1: go out with your friends and have drinks once every
Speaker 1: two weeks because that matters, or you need to go
Speaker 1: and get a many petty with your daughter and actually relax.
Speaker 1: I'll pitch in and do this other thing because I
Speaker 1: really feel strongly about you doing that, and that's not
Speaker 1: something I would have done before. Before I would have
Speaker 1: just sort of said, hey, it's awesome, you're doing everything. Great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think as a spouse, you want to sort
Speaker 1: of really understand that as true as that is for me,
Speaker 1: it's just as true for her.
Speaker 3: I think that's the key thing in a and we
Speaker 3: don't have kids, but I can definitely say on a
Speaker 3: relationship level, it's like, just because your partner can do
Speaker 3: something and is doing something doesn't mean that you should
Speaker 3: just accept that as reality for the rest of the time.
Speaker 3: And I see that that's one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 3: in relationships is people feel like their role is assumed
Speaker 3: because of what they've done in the past, but no
Speaker 3: one checked with them as to whether they were okay
Speaker 3: continuing to do it or whether they felt good doing it.
Speaker 3: And we think, well, they should tell us if they
Speaker 3: don't like it, they would tell us like I would
Speaker 3: tell them. But often you find that someone so ingrained
Speaker 3: in playing a role that they've even forgotten that they
Speaker 3: have needs or who they could be or can be,
Speaker 3: or they feel this overbearing burden or urgency and their
Speaker 3: role that they just can't disconnect from it. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's a great point to highlight, Peter. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's so many I really do want to talk to
Speaker 3: you if you still have the time. I really do
Speaker 3: want to talk to you about cancer, and maybe Alsamer's
Speaker 3: as well, because we went on a different direction which
Speaker 3: I wanted to go into and which I loved. But
Speaker 3: I want to talk to you about cancer just because
Speaker 3: I lost I've lost three people in my life to cancer.
Speaker 3: I lost my uncle, who was my mother's brother, when
Speaker 3: I was around gosh, maybe I was around maybe just
Speaker 3: about to be eighteen or something like that. He had
Speaker 3: throat cancer and it was tough to see him go
Speaker 3: through that. It was the first time someone in my
Speaker 3: direct circle i'd kind of witnessed the journey of someone
Speaker 3: and like struggling, going through pain and then you know,
Speaker 3: dying at a young age. He was like fifty seven
Speaker 3: years old. And then I saw my one of my
Speaker 3: probably my closest friend who I lived as a monk with,
Speaker 3: and he was still a monk when he passed away,
Speaker 3: and he had colon cancer and he was like my age,
Speaker 3: like he died two years ago now, so like that,
Speaker 3: he was a bit a couple of years older, so
Speaker 3: like thirty five around around thereabouts. I believe some of
Speaker 3: that was genetic, which we found out afterwards or like
Speaker 3: during the process, and he went through tons of cycles
Speaker 3: of chemo and like he tried everything. Like that guy
Speaker 3: had spirit and resilience and everything, and it you know,
Speaker 3: it was tough. And then I lost my spiritual mentor
Speaker 3: to brain cancer in the same time frame, during the
Speaker 3: year of COVID. So I also missed both of these
Speaker 3: people's funerals because I couldn't go back to London because
Speaker 3: you couldn't fly at the time. So anyway, all of
Speaker 3: that to say, I've just lost so many people of cancer,
Speaker 3: and I think that's just not uncommon, which is even
Speaker 3: worse in one sense, like I think everyone who's listening
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, Jamie too, And so I think it's
Speaker 3: so important to talk about because I don't know, is
Speaker 3: it one in three, one in two? I don't know
Speaker 3: what the stats are, but because it's so common, because
Speaker 3: it's so normal now and just someone having cancer. But
Speaker 3: at the same time it's the most painful news in
Speaker 3: the world because you kind of feel like you know
Speaker 3: where it's going to go. What have we seen as
Speaker 3: proven ways of preventing and confronting cancer, both holistic and
Speaker 3: you know, traditional medicine.
Speaker 1: You know, the way I sort of think about it
Speaker 1: is there are three things to be thinking about, three
Speaker 1: three categories. So the first, as you said, is what
Speaker 1: steps can you take to prevent cancer? The second question
Speaker 1: is if you get cancer, how can you catch it
Speaker 1: as early as possible. One thing we really do know
Speaker 1: is that if you treat a cancer earlier, your chances
Speaker 1: of beating it go up. And the longer you wait
Speaker 1: to treat it, meaning the later you catch it, the
Speaker 1: worse your odds. And then the third question is if
Speaker 1: you do find cancer, what are the ideal treatment strategies.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the first question, and this is the
Speaker 1: least satisfying because we don't know a whole lot about
Speaker 1: what's causing cancer. So we know two things for sure.
Speaker 1: We know that smoking is a big driver of cancer,
Speaker 1: and we know that obesity is a big driver of cancer. Now,
Speaker 1: obesity is a bit of a misleading term because it's
Speaker 1: just kind of an overly simplistic way to think about
Speaker 1: what's actually happening. The data say obesity, but really what
Speaker 1: it means is insulin resistance and inflammation. Those are two
Speaker 1: hallmarks of obesity that are present in seventy eighty percent
Speaker 1: of cases of obesity, and if you look at the
Speaker 1: data more closely, that's what's actually driving cancer. So it's
Speaker 1: not actually how much fat you have on your body,
Speaker 1: it's more how much fat is in certain parts of
Speaker 1: your body that are metabolically problematic. But after those two things,
Speaker 1: smoking and instead of obesity, I just prefer to say
Speaker 1: poor metabolic health. We have some one off examples. We
Speaker 1: know that there are certain types of exposures pesticide, you know,
Speaker 1: certain types of pesticides for example, certain type of toxins,
Speaker 1: but those don't account for the significant majority of them.
Speaker 1: So for many people, cancer is still a mystery. In
Speaker 1: other words, whatever it caused, whatever caused the initiation of
Speaker 1: the genetic mutations that ultimately led to a cancer that
Speaker 1: the body was not able to on its own remedy,
Speaker 1: is still a bit of a black box, and some
Speaker 1: very prominent cancer biologists actually just argue that it's bad luck.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's a stochastic process. So our genes
Speaker 1: are constantly replicating, but when mistakes are made, mutations occur,
Speaker 1: and some of these mutations derive cancer. And there's broadly
Speaker 1: speaking two types of mutations. There are mutations in tumor
Speaker 1: suppressor genes, so these are mutations in genes that are
Speaker 1: there to stop cancers when cancers appear. And then there
Speaker 1: are mutations in what are called oncogenes. These are genes
Speaker 1: that propagate cancer. So mutations in any of these things
Speaker 1: can actually lead to cancer. So once you sort of
Speaker 1: accept that you're going to do everything in your power
Speaker 1: to not get cancer, which is to say, you're not
Speaker 1: going to smoke, you're going to be as metabolically healthy
Speaker 1: as possible, You're going to exercise, sleep, do all those
Speaker 1: things right, the next most important thing is thinking about
Speaker 1: your strategy for cancer screening. You know, this is where
Speaker 1: I probably differ significantly from the mainstream, you know, establishment view,
Speaker 1: which is actually kind of, you know, not that aggressive
Speaker 1: on cancer screening. I would argue that we have to
Speaker 1: be very aggressive on cancer screening, provided we can get
Speaker 1: our minds around the problem we discussed a little while ago,
Speaker 1: which is we understand that there's going to be the
Speaker 1: harder you look for something, the more like you are
Speaker 1: to find something that isn't relevant. But if you understand
Speaker 1: that going in, and you're willing to accept that risk
Speaker 1: and evaluate each finding in a thought way, I think
Speaker 1: that for most people psychologically and physically, the benefit is
Speaker 1: a net positive one. And so that means looking at
Speaker 1: things that are for example, with a colonoscopy, doing it
Speaker 1: earlier and more frequently than is the standard recommendation. The
Speaker 1: stander recommendation is not to begin till you're forty five.
Speaker 1: We would recommend that everybody, even without a family history,
Speaker 1: begin at least five years before that. It also means
Speaker 1: repeating colonoscopies more frequently, especially in the finding of certain
Speaker 1: types of polyps. Whole body screening you talked about with
Speaker 1: certain types of MRIs. We also use something called the
Speaker 1: liquid biopsies. It's a blood test that looks for really
Speaker 1: really small fragments of DNA and the blood and can
Speaker 1: identify the presence of cancer and the tissue of origin. Now, again,
Speaker 1: none of these tests are perfect. So each of these
Speaker 1: tests have things that they're going to miss. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that the more you're layering these tests, the
Speaker 1: better your odds are refinding something earlier. And then the
Speaker 1: final point is, okay, well, what are the strategies you
Speaker 1: know if should you have cancer? And this is where
Speaker 1: I think we just have a little bit more promise
Speaker 1: now than we did decade ago. So a decade ago,
Speaker 1: because this is the first time I did this analysis.
Speaker 1: In the previous fifty years, so from you know, sixty
Speaker 1: years ago until ten years ago, the overall survival improvement
Speaker 1: in cancer was about three percent. Wow, it was abysmal.
Speaker 1: But in the past ten years it's been about another
Speaker 1: eight percent. And while that doesn't sound remarkable, and the
Speaker 1: implication of that is half the people who are diagnosed
Speaker 1: with cancer today will still die from cancer. It's the
Speaker 1: biologic insights and the trajectory that we're on right now
Speaker 1: that gives me much more hope. And that is primarily
Speaker 1: based on a couple of things. The first is the
Speaker 1: field of immunology has really taken off. The tools that
Speaker 1: we have to harness the immune system to attack cancer
Speaker 1: have become so dramatic.
Speaker 2: Immunotherapy R that's right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That it really is. I think within the next decade,
Speaker 1: which I know seems like an infinite amount of time
Speaker 1: for someone who's got cancer. Right now, we're really seeing
Speaker 1: changes that I think are going to allow immunotherapies to
Speaker 1: go from the niche place that they occupy in only
Speaker 1: working for certain types of cancers like melanoma and kidney cancer,
Speaker 1: to being able to go after the holy Grail of cancers,
Speaker 1: which are what we call the solid organ, epithelial tumors, breast, pancreatic, colon, lung.
Speaker 1: These are the big cancers that do the majority of
Speaker 1: the killing. Fifty percent of cancer deaths are just five
Speaker 1: cancers lung, colon, breast, prostate, pancreatic. That's more than fifty
Speaker 1: percent of all cancer deaths. Until you have a solution
Speaker 1: for those, we don't have a solution for cancer, and
Speaker 1: I do believe that we are really moving in that direction.
Speaker 3: We've touched on this point a few times of almost
Speaker 3: the stress about stress for health, and that's a really
Speaker 3: interesting way of thinking about it. It's like the stress
Speaker 3: of Oh, I need to work out today, I need
Speaker 3: to have my supplements to the stress of I can't sleep.
Speaker 3: Why am I not sleeping?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Like, we stress about the things that are good for us.
Speaker 3: How have you helped your patients, How have you coached
Speaker 3: them through that? How do you guide people through that?
Speaker 3: Because I think a lot of people go, well, then
Speaker 3: I'm just not going to do anything, because at least
Speaker 3: then I'm not stressed. I don't think that's the wisdom
Speaker 3: and what you're saying. I don't think you're saying, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's better not to have any stress at all. How
Speaker 3: do you help people to engage and you know, use
Speaker 3: that stress in a healthy way, or how do you
Speaker 3: guide patients through that stress?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think every patient's different, and I think
Speaker 1: you have to sort of get to know the person
Speaker 1: a little bit and figure out what's the underlying issue.
Speaker 1: So I do think that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who frankly self sabotage, going back to kind of
Speaker 1: like where I was. I mean, my self destructive behaviors
Speaker 1: weren't coming directly at the expense of my physical health.
Speaker 1: They were coming at the expense of my emotional health.
Speaker 1: But I actually think there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have very similar stories to mine, but their manifestation
Speaker 1: is it's coming at the expense of their physical health.
Speaker 1: They are sabotaging their ability. They are coming up with
Speaker 1: a million excuses why they can't eat well, they can't exercise,
Speaker 1: they can't do this, they can't do that. And so
Speaker 1: you have to be able to get to the root
Speaker 1: of the problem. And so there are many patients where
Speaker 1: we just think, look, you're not going to get better
Speaker 1: without trauma based therapy until you come up with a
Speaker 1: way to care enough about yourself to stop punishing yourself
Speaker 1: in this way. Because I think people punish themselves in
Speaker 1: different ways. You could almost argue I used to punish
Speaker 1: myself by overdoing all of those healthy things, like some
Speaker 1: of the exercise I was doing was actually a form
Speaker 1: of punishment. So on the surface, you'd say, boy, that
Speaker 1: guy's really healthy, but no, he wasn't. Another thing I
Speaker 1: always think about is when we're in the spirit of
Speaker 1: trying to build new habits, sometimes perfect is the enemy
Speaker 1: of good. Typically, what I want is a win, and
Speaker 1: I think that what people just need is a win,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't have to be the biggest win, and
Speaker 1: it just has to be a win. So if you're
Speaker 1: looking at a person for whom nothing is optimal. Don't
Speaker 1: try to fix all things at once. Pick the one
Speaker 1: thing that you think they have the greatest odds of
Speaker 1: being able to make a difference on, and just work
Speaker 1: on that and accept the fact that the other things
Speaker 1: will continue to be suboptimal. But you develop their confidence
Speaker 1: in that one thing. How about for twenty minutes a
Speaker 1: day you do something active. You go and walk for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes a day. If you're talking about a person
Speaker 1: who's never lifted a finger, that would be a huge win.
Speaker 1: And you might do that before you get into the
Speaker 1: details of this type of training or that type of training,
Speaker 1: or we're going to tweak your nutrition and optimize your
Speaker 1: protein intake. I mean, that's just overwhelming, and you're probably
Speaker 1: just more likely to fail at everything and create kind
Speaker 1: of a compensatory negative reaction. But again, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's a paint by numbers approach. I think you in
Speaker 1: the way we do it with patients, I think you
Speaker 1: just have to treat everybody individually and by the way.
Speaker 1: When something's not working, you have to accept it in
Speaker 1: pivot and try something that is.
Speaker 2: I think that's the keyword. Pivot. Yeah, that's a keyword
Speaker 2: everyone to.
Speaker 3: The book is called Outlive The Science and Art of Longevity.
Speaker 3: If you don't already have it, please go and grab
Speaker 3: a copy. I highly recommend it. Of course, today's conversation
Speaker 3: has been fantastic. I've tried to touch on topics that
Speaker 3: Peter may not have been asked about in a million
Speaker 3: different interviews. He's got fantastic interviews out there on so
Speaker 3: many awesome podcasts as well, so if you're more interested
Speaker 3: in the parts we didn't cover, please do go and
Speaker 3: watch those and get informed. Peter, It's been such a
Speaker 3: joy sitting down with you today. Honestly, there's been moments
Speaker 3: where I've been mind blown and moments where I've been
Speaker 3: taken aback and felt really in my body and really
Speaker 3: present where my feet are. And I'm just really grateful
Speaker 3: that we got to have this conversation. We've got to
Speaker 3: share so much incredible insights with our community today, and
Speaker 3: I want you to make sure that you tag me
Speaker 3: and Peter on Instagram, on TikTok, on threads with what
Speaker 3: you're learning, what you've taken away, what are the things
Speaker 3: you're going to apply and practice with, what's something you're
Speaker 3: going to experiment with this week. That would make me
Speaker 3: really happy is that you just take one thing away
Speaker 3: from this. I'm going to try that out. I'm going
Speaker 3: to figure this out for myself. That would be an
Speaker 3: awesome place to start, Peter. We end every episode with
Speaker 3: a final five a fast five, so these questions have
Speaker 3: to be answered in one word to one sentence Max,
Speaker 3: So Peter, these are your final five or your fast five.
Speaker 3: The first question is what is the best health advice
Speaker 3: you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: Exercise every day?
Speaker 3: Second question, what is the worst health advice you've ever
Speaker 3: heard or received?
Speaker 1: Do a cleanse?
Speaker 2: Ah? Interesting, Why that's it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh, I just think that, you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: I've seen some of those things go really bad where people,
Speaker 1: you know, get really mucked up and dehydrated. And I've
Speaker 1: seen people actually take in some chemicals and compounds that
Speaker 1: dramatically alter liver function tests and things like that.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, all right. Question number three, what's something you're
Speaker 3: currently trying to.
Speaker 1: Unlearn continuing to work on perfectionism, unlearning or detuning it.
Speaker 3: Question number four, what's something that you're a very big
Speaker 3: proponent of but a lot of people may disagree with you?
Speaker 2: And they're like, I'm not sure about it.
Speaker 1: Maybe the importance of very heavy strength training in postmenopausal women.
Speaker 3: Interesting, let's dive into that, because that's that's fascinating. Really,
Speaker 3: how specific you one?
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: Women postmenopause are so unbelievably susceptible to osteoporosis and osteopenia
Speaker 1: with the loss of estrogen. Unfortunately, many women in that
Speaker 1: situation are not getting hormone replacement therapy and so they're
Speaker 1: doubly susceptible to it. I think there's just a cultural
Speaker 1: belief that, you know, women don't need to lift weights,
Speaker 1: and if they do, it's very light. But the truth
Speaker 1: of it is, you really need to lift heavy things
Speaker 1: to make your bones stronger. And that doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: has to be complicated stuff like squats or deadlifts or
Speaker 1: things like that. But you know, one of the most
Speaker 1: important things is carrying, doing a farmer's carry, so holding
Speaker 1: very heavy dumbells in your hands and walking so important,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter how old you are.
Speaker 2: Got it great.
Speaker 3: Fifth and final question. If you could create one law
Speaker 3: that everyone in the world had to follow, what would
Speaker 3: it be?
Speaker 1: You must go into nature for at least an hour
Speaker 1: a day with no electronics and just be just be outside,
Speaker 1: be in nature, but be untethered to electronics or obvious distractions.
Speaker 3: Beautiful, Peter, that's fantastic. Thank you so much again for
Speaker 3: your time, your energy, your presence today. I hope this
Speaker 3: is the first of many times that you'll come back
Speaker 3: on purpose. And again, if you don't already follow Peter. Peter,
Speaker 3: where's the best place you'd like to be able to
Speaker 3: find you? I know you're on Instagram and YouTube and everywhere, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think everything is Peter and Ta MD is
Speaker 1: all the handles everywhere, and so thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate this.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with
Speaker 3: doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your life by
Speaker 3: changing your brain.
Speaker 4: If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with
Speaker 4: a healthy brain.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over
Speaker 4: a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers, and
Speaker 4: their brains are very damaged.