Nutritional Expert Reveals Why You Have Cravings and How To Stop Them | Ed Mylett

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And if you see a post-purchase survey, mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here on the Ed Milet Show. Cozy Earth comfort lives here. This is the Ed Milet Show. Hey, everyone.

Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes.

You'll never miss an episode that way. Here's our first guest. Welcome back, everybody. You know, it's not easy to get on the show two times.

Usually most are one and done. I'm so honored. And the reason I'm having you back was, I was just telling you off air, that, you know, the first episode we did just like virally went crazy. And I think it's one because of your brilliance and just the way you deliver very complicated information in a very easy to understand fashion.

That is, that's how you know you're a smart person. You don't have to try to sound smart all the time like I do. But the other reason is the topic. And so much of our audience is into this topic.

So let me introduce you so that everybody properly knows who you are. If you didn't hear her last time, I don't know, Harvard trained, Cornell trained, I don't know what else you want to know, Columbia. She's got a little bit of an educational background. And she's an expert in a lot of different things.

What we're really going to talk about today is hunger, your gut, your microbiome, how all of that stuff's connected so you can live better, healthier, with more energy, with better sleep. And there's some really cool stuff we're going to cover today with, back for the second time, Dr. Amy Shaw. Welcome back.

So honored to be here. I mean, your show is just the pinnacle of, you know, mindset and motivation. So, so honored. Well, you helped me with my mindset and I am motivated when you're here.

So my female listeners, I had different people on, and I've always asked because I'm a man. I often ask about like, okay, testosterone levels, hormone levels related to food. And I had Dr. Lane Norton on recently and I'd ask him, how do you feel about exogenous, testosterone?

And a lot of my female listeners, which is more of my audience than men, ironically, said, hey, would you please ask somebody about female hormone health on the show? And I'm like, yeah, I should be doing that shit. Nice to have a daughter and a wife and lots of female friends. So is there anything food-wise, particularly as it relates to a woman, that's different than a man or just in general that you say, here's something you should be doing to optimize your hormone levels?

I love talking about hormones because that was my journey. I felt like my hormones were imbalanced. I kept thinking, well, how am I going to balance my hormones? But what I didn't realize is that this is all about gut health again.

If you transplant gut bacteria from a male to a female, the female will have testosterone levels similar to the male without ever doing any testes, transplant, or changing their hormone, nothing. So it is coming from the gut. The gut bacteria can make hormones and help you balance. So there's very good evidence that when you have too high estrogen, it kind of stops it.

When you have too little, it kind of pumps it out. It is your best way to keep your hormone level stable as you get older. Poor gut health is one of the biggest reasons that women feel like their hormones are imbalanced. Maybe their cycles are off.

Their PMS is exaggerated. I actually talk about women should all know what their cycle is. So in today's world, in 2023, it's no secret that a woman has a 28-day cycle. It's still considered like, oh, don't talk about your period.

You know, it's like you have a daughter, you have a wife, you have female friends. So I encourage women to start to learn their cycle. Start to learn like, hey, there's a follicular phase for the first 14 days. Then there's a luteal phase.

And at the end of the luteal phase, that PMS is called the late luteal phase. You need to switch up how you do things. Late luteal phase, your hormones have dropped. It's like a free fall that the hormones just go away.

Well, I'm telling you this. You can help your friends, colleagues, the people, women in your life and the women listening and watching this. So when you're in that phase, switch it up. Switch it up.

So you're going to want to do less stressful activities. So if you like HIIT training, just lay off. Whatever that means, what it is for you. So if you're doing it three to five times a week, stay on the three or even two.

Start to do more yoga restorative. Don't do the long fast. Don't do the things that are going to stress you out. Even though you feel like eating a lot of sugary foods to get that mood boost, that's actually not the best time because your insulin sensitivity is also down in the dumps.

So eating things like sweet potato, complex carbs, things that are going to give you that feeling of carbohydrates, but they're not going to spike your blood sugar. Just don't keep eating the highly processed sugary foods because it's going to exacerbate the problem. And you're going to get such an insulin spike that you're going to regret it after people say, oh, I gained like 10 pounds during my PMS phase. It's because when they feel down, they're trying to replace their serotonin and dopamine with food.

So longer lasting fats are really good, like avocado mixed with some complex carbs. Eating a burrito with beans and rice and avocado, that's a great way to kind of give that comfort food feeling without getting your blood sugar all out of whack. Okay. Thank you so much for that.

I want to ask you in general, just let me think. Think about my life. So when we were joking there, I was thinking about the people in my life that I talk to most regularly. And I'm like, as it relates to gut health, and I'm talking about the type of gut health that's obvious to you.

Like I know I have gut health issues based on anecdotal stuff you've told me about my motion level, my energy level, but I don't feel like I have gut health issues, if that makes sense. Like in my gut, I don't have a lot of discomfort or those things. But in my own life, anecdotally, it does seem to me, I'm sure there's been no study on this and it's probably inaccurate, but in general, I would say my female friends mention discomfort in their gut more regularly than the men in my life. Has there been any studies about that?

And is that just that women are more in touch with their bodies than men? Or men think it's okay to be bloated and whatever? Or is there actually some evidence that says potentially with women because of their cycle, I don't know what the reason it might be, that they might have more gut health issues? Women have more cravings.

Women have more IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. Women visit the doctor, both because of convention, meaning like it's more men tend to not visit their doctor even when they have problems. But women have more of these issues. And we're hormonal, gut health, cravings.

Like when we looked at the cravings research, first of all, there's not that much research on women in general, but when you look at the cravings research, it's markedly different how much cravings really dictate a woman's life versus a man. It's like double. It's interesting. Yeah.

See, I had to tell you, I was talking to a good friend this morning about our wives and their health, and we were both pointing out to one another that our wives, and I think this is just, again, these are overgeneralizations, right? But that women typically put everybody else first and themselves last. And so they ignore these issues in their body. They've got to take care of their spouse or their boyfriend or their parents or their children or their grandchildren or whatever it is.

And they just sort of push away the discomfort or the, I think oftentimes, like, I'll get around to it, but I've got to care for everybody else. And that's why when I bring somebody like you on the show, I hope all the ladies listening to this really take note of it, that you've got to sometimes put yourself in the mix. And the men listening to this, if you have a woman in your life, ask her how she's feeling. When she's got some of the symptoms of these things, energy or anxiety or depression or lack of dopamine or bloating or just discomfort, like whatever these things are, take care of your lady.

You want to make sure she's taking care of herself. And so I'm just really glad that I asked you that because I wondered. It turns out it's true. Let's fix some of it for everybody.

What is a pre-probiotic? So probiotics is what we talked about, fermented food, probiotic food, food that has bacteria in it. That's probiotic. So we now know that eating as much, if you can get four servings of probiotics a day, that actually puts you in a category of the healthiest gut bacteria.

It actually can happen for you. All of us, anyone who's watching today, they can start to eat four to six servings of probiotic foods, which is, you know, the fermented cottage cheese, the yogurt, the kimchi, the apple cider vinegar. So there's a lot of things you can do. Prebiotics, so P-R-E, prebiotics, they're the food for your gut bacteria.

So you and I have different gut bacteria, but we can be equally healthy if we're eating prebiotics. So prebiotics are the fibers in foods, the polyphenols. What's psyllium husk? Yeah, that's a great fiber.

So remember about the six foods I was telling you, psyllium husk checks your fiber off for the day. Why does fiber make me feel, I feel like I get a triple whammy good with fiber? Yeah. One stuff starts to get moving better, right?

Two, I know the difference. But also, I feel fuller. Psyllium husk actually expands in your gut. There you go.

So we have stretch receptors, and when our stretch receptors get activated, leptin, our hormone that makes us feel full, gets set to the brain, so you're like, oh, I feel fuller. That's why soup and salads and vegetables just are so good for our appetite control because of these stretch receptors. It's a neurological system, so when you stretch it, it sends signals, and it creates hormones that actually help you stay fuller. Fascinating to me.

Is this good, guys, or what? Like, legit. See, you're hearing stuff here you don't hear every day. What, if you're going, I've got issues with this.

What type, what doctors do you know about this? Or is this stuff like, we've got to get on, I'm effing hungry, we've got to read the book, we've got to take the steps in it. But, like, I don't even know who you would call. I mean, is it, I guess, who do you talk to about it?

So I'll tell you the truth. The problem is, this is a huge opportunity for any company, any entrepreneur, right? Sure is. We said this last time.

You're right. And anyone who wants to kind of get into this field, they can, right? But there's no gold standard. There's no test, no pill, nothing right now that you can take.

Wouldn't it be awesome to take a, you know, lactobacillus, you know, cocktail of all these things that are going to boost our dopamine levels? Right now, there is a company that sells the stool pills of athletes. No kidding. So you can get the fecal transplant that you always wanted from your favorite athlete.

Because, you know, athletes will do anything to get an edge, right? What if someone told you, hey, you can eat like an athlete, you can start to think like an athlete, you might start to have better hormone levels like that athlete? Wait a minute. Are you serious?

The last time you were here, you educated me in the world about fecal transplants. And I thought, well, that's like one in a bazillion. There's no way. Like, that's last ditch emergency effort.

I've exhausted all options. But you're saying there's sort of a mini one. You're being serious right now. I'm serious.

Okay, first, this is for definition purposes. A fecal transplant is what? You covered it on the last show. Let's just do 30 seconds on that.

And you're saying more and more that you can actually get a pill, that you're getting LeBron James bacteria in your body. Because in LeBron James' stool, it's 30 to 50% is bacteria in his stool. So the best way for you to transplant his gut into your gut would be to swallow that stool or to have it placed in your gut somehow. So a fecal transplant is currently not allowed by the FDA, right?

Because they said it's really life-saving for some people who, you know, just they have this clostridium difficile. It's a very, very toxic bacteria. So they need a transplant from a healthy donor. So basically what they do is they take stool from a healthy donor, could be your family member, because it's like a blood product.

You can, you know, you really can't pass anything through it. And they take it and they mix it up and then they put it back into you like if you've ever gotten a colonoscopy, they basically put it back into your gut and it basically seeds your whole colon and now you have a whole new gut bacteria. Well, what that does for me is I know that's new, but it tells me like this part of medicine or science or nutrition is starting to finally progress. That's what's exciting for me.

And the company that's doing this, I mean, it's genius, right? You take really great athletes, optimal hormone levels, great dopamine levels, you know, very, very fit and you take their stool and then you clean it, you know, you make sure there's no diseases in there or whatever and then you put it in a pill and, you know, would you take it? I don't know. Yeah, I think I would.

I wouldn't if it was in a pill. It's not the other way I said. But all you guys out there and ladies that are getting really fit, hey, maybe there's going to be another way to monetize your fitness at some point. There you go.

Well, let me tell you this though. If you want to do it the old fashioned way, remember that thing is like you're the sum of the three people you spend the most time with. It's actually true. It's true.

So you're saying it'd be the sum of the three people who's gut bacteria that you put into your body. Start sharing their food. Start doing more hand-to-hand contact. You know what I mean?

I'm serious. Like that's why maternal, that's why moms and babies, when they breastfeed, that skin bacteria goes into the child, it sees their gut. When they come through the vaginal canal, it sees their gut. They have found that people that have C-section deliveries, they can tell 30 years later, 40 years later, because there's a difference in their gut bacteria.

It's incredible to me. I mean, last time you were here, in case someone didn't hear, she did talk often about sharing food with your children and how that's like, you shouldn't do it. She said, oh no, absolutely, you shouldn't do it because you're sharing that bacteria. So what is a psychobiotic?

Okay. This is probably the billion, maybe like, you know, the diet industry is about $4 billion. This is probably going to be double that. Okay.

Psychobiotics is the next phase of mental health. So remember in the beginning, we were talking about how bacteria can make dopamine. It's much more potent. Yeah, that's great.

It can also make serotonin. It can make GABA. It can make adrenaline. It has the power to change your brain.

You can transplant the gut, that bacteria from one human to another and change their entire mental state. Amazing. Schizophrenia can be cured in that sense. Depression, autism, you name it.

So now we're doing abysmally bad in mental health, right? We're going skyrocketing. What if we started to think about it in a different way? Okay.

Maybe we don't just think about it as like a deficiency in chemical, right? Maybe we start to think about it as a whole body disease. Like I said, a big picture of the brain, immune system, and gut. And we start from inside out rather than just, you know, giving them a pill.

Yeah. You know, Amy, intuitively, this just makes sense to me. Yeah. Like it's the frontier of health now.

So I'm going to go back for a minute. If you have somebody in your life right now, I just want to give you my layman's translation. You or anybody that you know that is struggling with gut health, or they don't even know they're struggling with gut health, but they've got, you know, emotional discomfort in their life, energy, drive, ambition issues, and you've tried a lot of other things. Why not start eating these six superfoods?

Why not introduce more fiber? Why not go the prebiotic route, the probiotic route? Why not begin to do this and give us some time and see if you can really change the gut-brain relationship? Because I got to tell you, like for me, I'm thinking of so many people in my life that have really tried almost everything.

And also maybe eating wrong too with the way they fast. That's a big one for me. Yeah. Because it's connected.

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The best probiotic you can take is exercise. It is better than, and you can spend $150 a month and your exercise for 20 minutes, especially if it's outdoors, is gonna do a better job because our gut bacteria love exercise. They produce this like happy chemical called burate. It's a type of short chain fatty acid that goes all over the body, including the brain, to calm down inflammation.

Inflammation in the brain is what makes you tired, what makes you unhappy. Have you ever noticed when you exercise, you feel happier, you feel more motivated, but it has this anti-inflammatory effect on your body that is more than just the calories burned, right? So that is the effect of short chain fatty acids. Short chain fatty acids is like an anti-inflammatory drug that you can never bottle up, but it happens when you exercise about bacteria and make it.

I gotta tell you, I do feel better when I work out and I feel a level better when I work out outside. Yeah. Why? I was gonna say when you were saying that change your food, I said, I would say if you were gonna do one food thing, one non-food thing, okay?

The non-food thing I would do is start to incorporate a sunny walk into your day. One sunny walk into your day every day and see what kind of magic it does for your brain, for your immune system, for your gut. My mom just today said, she hadn't exercised in the last month when this all started. And I said, it's the exercise.

It's not getting enough nature. It's not getting enough movement. You're really short changing your immune system. My goodness.

My mom has those issues. Mom, start to walk around that part more often. She's doing it a few days a week. It sounds so silly, right?

You feel like there should be like, there should be a million dollar medication or savior. I always tell people that there is no one coming to save you. No one's coming on a white horse and they're not gonna have a cocktail of pills and drinks for you. They're not gonna pick you up.

You have to pick yourself up. You gotta do the work. You have to move your body. You have to eat the right foods.

You have to save yourself. I don't get crazy at all. I'm driving here today. One of my best friends called me.

We're both saying to one another, just in a malaise lately. And both of us acknowledge that recently when we wake up, like there's been mornings recently more for him than me, but for both of us, there's just dread about the day. And for some reason, we both reached the conclusion. We need to work out, take more walks.

And I said to him, I'm a very well-known businessman that I know, one of the richest men in the world. Now he does an extreme thing. He walks like four or five hours a day. That might be extreme.

But something to his mental health, his creativity, he's in his 80s too, his longevity, but anecdotally, it's exactly right for me. And the reason why people don't say this, I think part of the industry that we, the world we live in, this capitalistic world, they don't want you to just get better by walking around in the sun, right? Well, then you won't buy the stuff. So speaking of that, you're reading my mind.

What if I'm on medication? I'm listening to this, and maybe it's not you, it's your mom or your kids or something, but I'm on a statin. I'm on some medication for some ailment I've got. I got to figure if champagne, if alcohol is messing my gut up, somehow medication of any type is jacking with my gut somehow.

Is it? Well, let's put it this way. We now know that there are many medications that inhibit the bacterial growth. We know, obviously, antivirus is one of them, but now we know that acid-reducing medications, they also harm the gut bacteria.

Now, the problem with a lot of people is they want to just get off their meds, right? You can't just get off your meds. It's really dangerous. And sometimes you need those medications to get you through.

You need to work with your doctor, and you need to say, hey, doc, I want to start to reduce my medications. I'm going to change my diet. I'm going to read this book. I'm going to change my diet.

I'm going to start doing the exercise. Can we do this together? And then start to do it. Because some people, I mean, you need an SSRI.

Those are the type of medications for depression or anxiety. You need that as a bridge. Maybe you're starting to do all that, but you need some time. You yank off right away, you're in the danger zone.

Gut bacteria starts to change in three days. Okay, that quickly. A landmark study in Nature, which is like the biggest, it's like the Harvard research journals, reported a study where they rapidly changed the diet of people. And they just wanted to see, like, how long does it take to start to see a big change in their microbiome?

Three days. Three days. Was that good news, everybody? Because a lot of stuff in life takes, you know, forever.

I mean, I'm sure it's not fixed in three days, but it's making progress in three days. Right, that's when it starts. You start to feel, oh, you know, my cravings are a little different. You listen to my show every week.

Like, can I just say something to you as somebody who loves you and I do the show for you? Do some of this stuff now. Take something we've covered today and implement it. Take at least one of these things.

Go get them so effing hungry. Read it. There's stuff in there that I've changed since the last time Amy was here. And it's, you know what?

I think you sometimes have changes and you don't realize, like, I have a lot of energy. Yeah. You know, I'm working harder right now at 51 years old than I have ever worked in my life. And I worked really hard when I was young to go from broke to not broke anymore.

And the truth is, I can honestly say this. I don't feel like it. I feel really good. Yeah.

Really good. For a dude my age, as hard as I work and travel, I attribute a lot of this stuff to many of the things you find. Like, one just thing for me, like, it was just really simple because I'm a simple person. I'm like, I'm taking a probiotic going forward and I'm starting to eat way more fiber.

Those two things, just for me alone, like, this is a huge difference for me. It's just fiber alone. Like, it seems really simple, but it's been a major game changer for me, so thank you. Just one.

You know, you talk about one more. The power of one more. I mean, the thing that I think is so great for people when they hear that, when they read the book, is that you can do one more. You know, like I said, you can have one thing that has fiber in the day.

You can take one walk. Right, and the reason I like doing one or two is that if things haven't changed, I know that wasn't the issue. It's the next thing, right? And so I'll go to the next thing.

What's chrononutrition? Yeah, chrononutrition is this time-restricted eating in the literature it's called, but we call it circadian fasting. Chrononutrition is you are supposed to be eating at certain times of the day. Medications actually work better when taken at certain times of the day.

There's a whole, I mean, we never even talk about, you know, when to eat. We always talk about what to eat, right? So there's a whole, there's a clock in every single one of ourselves and if we're not following that clock, you will feel exhausted. You will feel hungry.

You will feel the cravings. Have you ever not gotten a good night of sleep? Are you reading my death of mine right now? Because it's about sleep was my next question.

Please go. We talk about this a lot in the book. It's sleep and things we can do to sleep better. So yeah, like the number one reason I want to be back here for me to answer your question so that you can give the brilliance now is if there is an element to my wellness game that there's still a big hole in it is sleep.

And I think for a lot of people that they don't sleep well. They don't sleep deeply. They don't get into the right brainwave states early enough in sleep or long enough. They're not really resting when they sleep.

So heck yeah, I know what it's like not to sleep well. So please fix this for all of us. Well, I have a question for you if you want to share. Sure.

What is your sleep like? What's the issue that you usually have? And then we can use you as an example. Okay.

Well, in my case, my heart rate's too high when I sleep. I don't like my resting heart rate. I've been working on that. I would say it's staying asleep.

So I don't have that hard of a time anymore. I used to have a hard time falling asleep. My mind was racing. I've done things with making the room cooler, making it very dark in the room, trying not to eat for a while before.

But for me, it's staying asleep. I wake up a lot in the middle of the night. And then when I wake up, getting back in any type of deep sleep, I find, you know, once I'm up, it feels like very surface sleep to me. What are the hours that you wake up usually?

A lot. So I would say, I'm also a 50-year-old man, so every once in a week I have to get up and pee. But I would say that I probably get up. I guess monitor one of those aura rings.

So it tells me. I'd say I'm up every 90 minutes or so, maybe every two hours, best case scenario. So I'm glad you did the sleep hygiene thing because, and that's what you're saying, the blackout curtains, you keep the room cold, you start to not eat. But the other thing about it, and you didn't mention this part, is the blue light.

Are you getting a lot of blue light or looking at your phone, looking at your computer, activating? So when you have an activating charged conversation, email, phone call, right before bed, what you're telling your brain is that there's a threat. You know, there's a lion outside. Your brain's not going to let you sleep.

Your brain's going to keep you on light mode, keep you alert so that a little sound will wake you up. Yeah, I'm blue light until I go to sleep. I'm on my phone until I go to sleep. I'm on my phone in the bed.

And then what about in the morning? Morning, I'm a little better. I'm a little better when I wake up. I've got the 30-minute rule where I don't touch my phone most days for the first 30 minutes, but I have to be completely honest with you.

That blue light's in my grill until my eyes close. I'm in my bed. Heck, it's when I'm reading, it's when I'm doing emails, it's when I'm buying on Amazon what I want or think about. So yeah, I'm on that phone, and I am on that phone all the time as well.

What about when you wake up in the middle of the night? I do check it. Yeah. Because you know what, because I have this goofy rule, it's not goofy, it's good.

I don't check it once I wake up in the morning, but when I wake up at 2 a.m. do I check my phone? Absolutely yes. So one bout of blue light delays your melatonin by 90 minutes.

So when, have you ever noticed that? So what you want to do when you wake up in the middle of the night is not look at your phone. Maybe you get a clock if you need to look at the time, an analog clock, a different way to check the time if you're just curious. Don't turn on the lights.

Do kind of the squint and walk to the bathroom, dark, dark, dark. Keep your thoughts really clear. You're not going into your to-do list at 2 a.m. Don't start to rehearse.

Like, oh, I got this big guest tomorrow. You don't want to be in your forebrain, right? Because that's going to keep you up. So keeping it dark, keeping it kind of very, very dim and your thoughts very, very calm and then get back into bed and then see what happens.

Because when you look at your phone, you activate those frontal centers, that's what's keeping you up. So when you talk about when people take THC, marijuana, cannabis, all of these aspects, what's happening is it turns off the forebrain. And so they're able to relax. What do you think about doing that?

Taking some gummy before you go to sleep? My problem with that is that what do you do when you don't have a gummy? It's like I'm fine with taking melatonin and taking oils, taking whatever you need as a stopgap method. But what are you going to do for the rest of your life?

You have to learn how to turn that forebrain off, right? You have to learn to get out of... If you don't train yourself to do that, then you're always going to have that crutch. That's my only issue with all of this stuff, right?

If you can't socialize without your alcohol, are you really social? No, right? You're really right, Amy. That's my deal.

It's the blue light for me. Some people, it's not dark enough or cold enough or whatever. It's the cortisol. Also, I don't know about you, but I have a high-stress life.

You go to bed stressed. You wake up in the middle of the night because you have a little bump of your cortisol in the middle of the night. And for some of us, high-strung people, that bump is enough to kind of wake you. I sometimes wake up in like, you know, especially when I have a lot going on.

That's how I know. Me too. I love your work. Okay, two more questions.

I want to go four hours, but we can't. So water, hydration, as it relates to gut health and wellness. And like, there's a saying, drink a gallon of water a day. Does that, how big you are calibrated in that?

Like, I don't know, you probably weigh 105 pounds or something like that. I weigh 210 pounds. Are we supposed to drink the same amount of water or is there some ratio there that matters? It's ridiculous, right?

This whole, it's what we call bro science. You know, drink eight glass of water a day. There's no study. I was even surprised because I thought, how did there be no study saying that you should be drinking eight glass of water?

No study. This is just, I don't even know how it came about. Basically, if you talk to any kidney specialist, blood specialist, we are trying to prevent dehydration. So you just tell people, drink before you get thirsty because if you're getting thirsty, it's already a sign that you're starting to get dehydrated, right?

So you want to drink enough for your body that when you go to the bathroom, it's light yellow. Okay. It's not dark yellow, it's not orange, you know, it is. You shouldn't get an odor from it.

Am I right about that? Yeah, there are. I mean, sometimes certain foods like asparagus, odor makes that odor. But really, when you're drinking water, even a little bit of dehydration can make you hungry, can make you crave, can make you tired.

So you really want to stay on top of that hydration. So for you, it may be a gallon, but for me, that might be a half a gallon. Okay, so you're one of the fittest people that's ever been on my show and you're telling me you don't drink a gallon of water a day because of your body size, you don't drink that much. I drink to thirst.

Like, I mean, I drink before I get thirsty. If I'm thirsty, that's a sign that I gotta drink a lot of water. Okay. And also, I would imagine when you're eating a lot of vegetables and things like that, there's actually water in some of the food you're ingesting too, right?

Probably not a lot, but there's some water in that food as well. And, you know, but you have to remember that a lot of us are drinking a ton of coffee, which is a diuretic, so you gotta counteract the coffee that you're drinking. Coffee, by the way, is great for your dopamine because it actually increases the dopamine receptors in your brain, so it's good for motivation, but then it dehydrates you. A lot of people drink it to go to the bathroom.

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Now available in Canada, too. Go to quince.com slash ed for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash ed. I have to tell you something, and then one last question.

As I started to eat more the way your book recommends, this is a really weird thing, I crave and dislike coffee more. I don't know what it is, but I can't even drink a full cup of coffee anymore, whereas I'm like a coffee addict. Now, I don't know what it is. I think it's because all my stuff, my pipes are working really good without it, that I don't really drink that much coffee.

No one's ever told me it's bad to drink coffee, but I just frankly crave less of it. And when I made my coffee, I wanted lots of Splenda or sugar or something in it. And again, I think my gut health has improved to the point where I don't have the craving for sugar so early in my day. And that distinction between craving and health is huge.

You wanted to say something, I could tell. I was going to say that. I'm sure you say this. Motivation follows action, right?

For gut health, that's true because you start to make the changes and then those bacteria start to motivate you. I don't know what it is with you and I today, but you're right where I'm going. Like, thank you. So my last question is, you say this in the book, that the way you think can affect your gut health.

So your gut health can affect the way you think, but also the way you think can affect your gut health. That part, you're pushing my ability to understand. So finish with that. How does how we think impact our gut health and what should we be thinking to impact it the right way?

That's why I said you were missing the big picture because that brain has so much power to... create change in your body we know our brain has the power to heal us to make us happy to make us a better people right they have seen studies already human studies where you take someone who's generally a happy-go-lucky well-being like they rated their well-being as high they have different gut bacteria than people who generally rate themselves as kind of more negative people right so what you think can change your gut bacteria that blows my mind by the way i should have great gut bacteria yeah because i think the right stuff most of the time i'd like to think that i do that should be more motivation to you know hang out the right people think the right things look at the right social media sites because your brain has so much power i'm so glad you came back on the show i think you're one of the most interesting people and this is one of the most interesting topics and i told you i was really glad the last time you're on that everybody seemed to agree because i do think it's so important and there's a part of me that okay we're gonna talk about stomach and gut and no everyone was like oh my gosh this is incredible and i think today was even better i hope so so i think you're remarkable thank you for all my guests today by the way too i'm so i'm so honored to be on your show because i'm such a huge fan of your work thank you thank you well you know that's extremely mutual and um you're gonna come on again everybody by the way just first off very clearly i want to express to you my gratitude and thank you and thank you for your work and keep doing it because it's changing and saving lives it just really is guys this is why i do the show right here today like today like i know we did really good stuff for all of you today and the reason certainly isn't me it's dr shaw so please go get her book i'm so effing hungry depending on you hear this might be on pre-order it might be already out doesn't matter go to amazon grab a copy or get one in advance and uh let's make this thing a bestseller because the more people that know this stuff the more people are going to live happier longer more fulfilling lives very short intermission here folks i'm glad you're enjoying the show so far don't forget to follow the show on apple and spotify links are in the show notes now on to our next guest all right welcome back to the show everybody today is going to be one of those shows that you're going to learn a ton about your gut and your mind and your happiness level and your overall well-being in ways probably that you never have before and so i specifically invited dr amy shaw to be here today who by the way is the author of i'm so effing tired which you should go grab right away but we're going to ask her to come here today because this is a topic i want to understand because i've actually been struggling with it a little bit frankly myself so welcome to the show thanks so much for having me and it was a difficult journey to get here flying in i'm here i'm happy i got to use some of the mind gut connection tools that we'll talk about okay let's get into these tools so the first thing is i'm sort of surprised i didn't realize this you say that the gut has an impact on our mind and even as far as depression and mental health mental well-being and i did not know that absolutely i mean we always talk about mental health in the way of thinking differently or taking medications but there are bacteria in your gut that actually determine what you're thinking your mood right now your energy levels um even schizophrenia um neurological diseases anxiety depression they can literally change your mood by just changing the bacteria in your body it's crazy you can transplant a mood from one person to the other we're gonna talk about fecal transplant later because i didn't know what the term meant so i prepared for the interview today but let's stay there for a second so you're telling me that because by the way people that are listening to this or watching this oftentimes are having these emotions and these feelings that potentially they think are triggered by their environment external environment someone caught me off on the freeway or i didn't get a promotion or you know i got a negative comment on social media saying maybe that's what it is but it can actually be the bacteria in our gut that is actually signaling our emotions how does that actually physically work there are at least four different ways we know that the gut actually signals to the brain what we should be feeling at any particular moment it produces serotonin it produces dopamine i mean these are the things that we think about are produced only in our brain but actually 90 percent of it is produced in our gut and what it does is it sends signals they have ways to signal to the brain through the vagus nerve through creating little vesicles that go travel through the body and like inflammation so using our immune system to communicate so when you're trying to think about oh i'm anxious or i'm not feeling well i'm not focused or i feel tired one of the things you should do is start to think about how you can improve that gut bacteria because there's a direct correlation i mean there's a bacteria called acromantia um and it actually has been shown to reverse neurological diseases because it produces this vitamin b3 who knew that bacteria produce vitamins in our body right and this bacteria this b3 nicotinamide goes to our brain and actually can help with the myelin sheets on our axons in our brain so it's like protecting those sheaths is so important as we age with dementia and with things like als and autism and neurological diseases so this stuff is like blowing open um the entire world of how we think about our mindset mood and even like how we do work because we've been basically ignoring this data for so long so we're on the track of killing these bacteria and stripping their functions so basically we're working with a fraction of the bacteria we should be having so this is so important for those of you listening to this because you're most of my life is pretty health conscious yeah credit right train you know they read the good books they listen to me they do those other things you use the term who knew so i'm gonna lay a foundation for that who does know and how long have we known so we've been ignoring the data for a while but my sense is and this isn't you know this isn't the first time that i've had these thoughts or conversations but obviously to the depth that you're not going to go today how new is this thinking how new is this space that you're in well um this bacteria that i just mentioned to you acromantia it was named in 2004 so it was just discovered and the links of autism and bacteria is uh lactobacillus lutarai i think that was in um that was about 10 years ago so this is new stuff in medicine anything 20 years or less is new um i went it's i'm gonna age myself but about 20 years ago when i graduated it was not really talked about i mean we didn't really i mean gut was gut you know if you had constipation diarrhea and you'd deal with the gut but you wouldn't think of it in terms of how we're focused or our energy levels or our mood and america is facing like epidemic levels of anxiety and depression medications a 20 something percent rise in depression medications were the unhappiest we've been in 50 years and 56 percent of americans say that they have trouble with their mental health so we're in a bad spot we're mainly treating that by trying to regulate the serotonin levels in someone's brain and um instead of potentially looking at their gut health so let's let's say the reverse is also true you believe that the way that we think impacts our gut also true isn't that fascinating yeah it is to me it's super fascinating you can take people who are you know people who believe in god or people who think positively or people who have a well well-being mindset or self-reported and um you can identify them by their gut bacteria so there was a study that actually looked at their gut bacteria and they said oh they look different in their diversity of how many bacteria there are and the prevalent species and same with schizophrenia i mean they they can look at the gut bacteria of schizophrenic anon and not knowing who's who they were able to pick out the schizophrenic people now that's incredible the reason i told you that i've been struggling with this so it's gonna be interesting from audience as well i found out recently that i had h pylori and so i was prescribed a huge course of antibiotics like i think three at one time really really heavy and i noticed and by the way i'm sort of like the king of mental health and how to think correctly and programming your mind and the particular activating system and i found myself having a really difficult time um it's interesting because you were referred to me during this time this is very recent i was down waking up with like tremendous anxiety and i would wake up with this anxiety and not know why i had it and i'm almost creating things as i was coming out of sleep to be worried about to be concerned about giving a damn like this isn't me at all and i'm trying every tool in my handbag that i've developed over all these years and they weren't working and so you would tell me that that is probably the fact that i've wiped out this bacteria in my gut that i need so this is important for everybody let's talk about antibiotics in general and the impact they might have on other facets of our lives other than just getting rid of h pylori or whatever that we have absolutely and the sad thing is we're giving antibiotics to animals that um are going to be um you know our food and dairy and in meat and we give it to children um that are developing their immune systems i mean from zero to five we can change our microbiome but from zero to five they are forming the basis of their microbiome and if you're giving them different kinds of antibiotics and sanitizing everything they do using antimicrobial cleaners for everything you will change their microbiome in a negative way that could impact them for their entire life and so that that's food for thought for us in the last two years i mean what damage have we done to our future population because we can recover somewhat um but when you're forming that zero to five that's like the key time that you don't really want to be giving a ton of antibiotics during that time yet we give it out like you know still in medicine it's pretty much given out to every single child it's also given out to adults a lot too though right so like what's your opinion about that should we be prescribing antibiotics and if someone listening to this is let's just be honest probably in the last year or two a lot of people listen to this will prescribe antibiotics for something right so what would you say to them well it's like anything i feel that because it was so beneficial for so many years because it helped us live longer i mean people died it from you know diseases that we could have prevented now it's gone to the other extreme where they're people who are using antibiotics antibiotics for things like you know when you have a viral infection or when you just want to be safe or just insurance and that's really a dangerous path that we've taken not only for you know for people who have opportunistic infections um because once you use a lot of antibiotics they don't work anymore but it's also because we are killing that exact bacterial colonies that are making us happy that are making us um satisfied you know when it comes to hunger and cravings we know obesity and cravings and um you know eating disorders they're all related to the gut okay so we're gonna talk a minute about sugar cravings and whatnot as well so essentially you say this about antibiotics and they almost use them like their vitamins or something and again i'm not qualified to know whether or not you know it's the degree in which it hurts us but i had a doctor one time that every time i went to mexico would give me like prophylactic antibiotics before i went down there you know i'm talking about i wasn't sick but in case you might get sick when you go down there take these before you go and take them while you're there yeah and i think that's why this conversation is so important because i think now if you know this and i know this next time we're offered an antibiotic we might think twice like hey let me just wait about another week and see if i really need it because there are cases you are going to need it so um it's it's a case of over overzealous prescriptions and it's really really hurting us okay so we now know that there's an emotional connection between our gut and our lives we know that now and our brains so we've established that which is you know for most people this is probably a revelation for most people we also know that the antibiotics are gonna monkey with those bacteria in there to some extent and potentially could eliminate the ones that serve us that was a great conversation if you want to hear the full interview be sure to follow the ed my life show on apple and spotify links are in the show notes here's an excerpt i did with our next guest all right welcome back to the program everybody i'm so excited to have this man here today you all know who he is you've seen him he's one of the biggest health and fitness experts on the planet new york times best-selling author most of you probably know him from the biggest loser but if you've not been paying attention there's another little deal here this guy was dead for nine minutes how about that i don't get your attention if you're driving yeah gone for nine gone for nine minutes and so we're going to talk today about one of the most interesting stories you're going to hear in your life and then we're going to transition and talk about transformation and change because he's maybe a handful of people on planet earth that are the experts at doing this with human beings and bob is one of them so bob harper welcome to the program brother i'm glad to be here thanks for having me i'm thrilled to have you man so let's let's get into uh the most recent events in your life so you're one of the fittest dudes on earth training you know five six seven days a week you're known for other people get fit you're at the gym the workout's about to end and tell us what happens this is shocking well i'll tell you uh what i'm about to tell you are um all the stories that were told me because i don't remember that day i don't remember getting up that morning walking my dog i don't remember going to the gym that day i remember my friend said that i was working out with he said i was complaining about being really dizzy and he said that i just seemed kind of out of it the next thing i knew i woke up in a hospital two days later being told not only did i have a heart attack but i'd gone into cardiac arrest and so i'll tell you that was a really uh eye-opening jarring experience uh for me but uh it was i was in the middle of a workout i was doing crossfit i for years i mean i i love that style of working out and uh it was it was in that crossfit gym that i just dropped out on the floor for about nine minutes i think sometimes people listen to this like well i'm 26 years old why does this apply to me you're gonna know why in a minute there's preventive things you can do there's some genetic issues for a lot of you you don't know you have like i didn't know i had but i'm curious about did you have any symptoms prior were you having more fatigue than normal chest pains you know anything like that prior to this incident taking place looking at me at that time i was not someone that you would think would be at risk of having a heart attack you know you think about you think about that person as being overweight poor diet smokes drinks heavily you know i was not uh i was not any of those i didn't have any of those qualities so what i've learned in this situation is that i really need to look at my health from the inside out and that's what i really try to tell people because it doesn't matter how you look i mean i'm looking at you right now with your you know jacked arms and looking unsupervised i'm like you know what's going on with your uh with your health and you told me you had a heart attack yeah i had a heart issue since i was probably 30 years old and it's one thing just for the audience is like listen you're all busy with different parts of your life okay and you know if you're overweight or you've got diabetes or you smoke obviously you know that you're probably you know in line for some sort of cardiac issues but if you're fit like most of the people that listen to the show or you're young listen genetics plays a role in this and you know this as well as i do maybe even speak to this there are things people can do in terms of genetic testing right now to find out whether they may be a potential candidate to be at a gym at 50 something early years old and gone for nine minutes of their life there's genetic testing right like really knowing your health care provider asking all the right questions and asking questions that you don't even uh you don't even know to ask it's like i tell people how important it is to have that kind of relationship with your health care provider because they are the ones that are guiding you into your into your longevity right so it's like you i don't claim to be a doctor i don't have all the answers but like i need to be around the people that know all the the ins and outs of my health yeah it's obvious that you believe in god or the universe or whatever you were sort of chosen for this like the face of fitness in the country and then it happens to you after you're and by the way you're around people helping getting examinations from doctors who are losing all this weight i just hope everybody hears this by the way he has this project he's working on called survivorsheart.com and it's basically these photographs of people that have had these issues and if you've ever wondered if there's a face of heart issues or cardiac issues you will quickly find out there's not one face there's men there's women that's one thing for the ladies listening to more and more heart disease is affecting women i think oftentimes you believe this happens to men because you hear about it there's two guys talking about today you study the data that's the number one cause of death in women now is their heart and so please get tested and the other thing on testing and i'll let you speak to this but the testing's a lot better than it used to be you know it's not just acl and ldl there's big particle little particle there's lipoprotein little a there's all these things that are markers now guys that you want to get looked at get your labs done i talk about this all the time on the show so yeah i had that was my genetic issue uh lp little a you just brought up and that was something that i was not even aware of didn't know anything about it and it's a simple blood test but it's one of those things that you gotta ask your doctor about it's like you're doing these blood tests tell me you're checking my cholesterol check my lpa because that's the issue that i have that still a lot of people don't even know about but it's incredible you say that because that was my issue that's incredible because you know your average general practitioner guys i think you're like yeah we'll test your hdl and ldl there are other things now and especially this lipoprotein a that you need to know so now let's not know how it affects your life because i'm just super curious two days later you wake up you're like my people probably informing you of what happened how did this affect you emotionally it was really really difficult i'll tell you because imagine think about whatever it is that really identifies who you are what makes you just get up in the morning and it's a reason to live and it's your driving force of life that's what health and diet and exercise has always been for me it's like i love you the gym i love that's my community it's like where i go and it's my stress reliever now put in the most horrific thing that has ever happened to me in that situation so what happened for me is just dealing with ptsc like am i gonna have another heart attack the fear that i that i had as i'm walking around i was afraid to be alone i could not be alone because if i would have been alone when i had this heart attack i wouldn't be here talking to you right now people say oh you were able to recover because you were so fit and so healthy i'm like no i'm here today talking to you because there was someone in the gym that day that knew how to perform cpr that was aware of an aed that had the persistence because the aed wasn't working on me because i already flatlined and like aed won't work unless there's some sort of electric current going on with your heart and so this man this doctor who was not even a member of the gym he was at an event that day he said that he saw me i was blue on the ground and he thought okay you know what i'm going to do everything i can almost busted my rib cage open when i was um when i came out of the coma i had pneumonia because they had to put me on ice because what they tried to do was like okay am i going to survive they realized i was going to survive but then they thought am i going to be the same person so they had to put me on ice to try to protect my brain with brain swelling and so um it was it was really a challenging experience and what i would gather during this time was all the people around me they were very interested in my physical well-being and my physical health which was absolutely what they needed to do but it was the emotional turmoil that i was going through too it was like who am i if i am not the fitness guy right who am i who is this new person i had to find a completely new normal and it was super challenging they used aed on you multiple times which is i'm just picturing this this beautiful soul watching you know picturing you're fit for some reason the visual for me really affects me just picturing you there and then kind of get you back in the cpr and there's another part of me but i'm just thinking this is sort of destined to some way to be someone you're the combination of your notoriety already so you have a platform you're already fit so you're this face of heart attack that's different for most people there happens to be the doctor there you know this isn't my coincidence that all these things happened but i and i just want to say that to you just as a friend as a brother just like it's got as obvious the writings on the wall in hindsight like everything in life right but at the time i have to wonder for you you know you said it changed you a little bit emotionally because it's like identity oftentimes a lot of us i think our identity is tied to what we do yes not who we are and and and oftentimes you know an athlete of their careers they can't do that thing anymore uh-huh so what process did you go through to kind of figure out just like the first time you're like who am i i got the feeling you've done work like that before but i'm curious what was it like you're discovering you for the first time pretty much because i i've been in the health and fitness business for over 30 years now i mean it's like it is who i am it is a part of my dna so me having this heart attack i was also very embarrassed like one doctor and um therapist i was working with he asked me he's like give me one word to describe uh that that whole experience and the first word that came to my mind was embarrassed like how yeah how did this happen to me and i remember i remember my my team the people that i've been working with for such a long time you know everyone was like oh my god is he gonna have a career anymore after this because of what had happened to me and i remember just like leaning into it right i was an open book during my whole recovery time because imagine this i wasn't able to do any kind of work uh workouts i was in hospital for a week when i got back my doctor was like okay here's what you can do you can walk and i was only able to walk around a block without feeling super fatigued and tired and like i was coming from doing crossfit when i was Olympic lifting i was like a 210 pound guy that was like fit and i loved it and now like i'm living in like you know the 170s and i'm having to to pivot that's the word that kind of keeps coming to um into my vocabulary as much of like having to pivot because what i can't do anymore is be the person that i was when i was in my 20s my 30s or even my 40s it's like i don't want to keep searching for that dangling carrot like it's like wow i was able to do all this why can't i do this i'm like you know what i can't and maybe i could if i put the put the time and the effort but like it just it's not interesting to me anymore i'm like okay you know what i do i do high yoga all every day now i you know i ride my bike you know i do workouts like that and you know i feel really good with what i'm doing but it was just it was having to kind of come to grips with what had happened to me and and learning how to pivot and and not just get stuck i was pissed i was pissed that this had happened to me i i didn't want to be experiencing this i was like you know i was like you know i'm a superhero like i'm in my 50s and i'm like doing these workouts with these you know 20 and 30 years old 30 year old people and i'm like you know what that was part of my identity and you know that had to change and it changed really quickly really dramatically i wonder about the pivot thing because man consciousness human beings right now there's more people right now pivoting to some extent in their life than ever at any time on the earth right like either their career ended because of the pandemic or they're shifting or even just their whole outlook on things has changed now they've had more time to reflect on what matters to them and i i get asked this a lot you know millions of people i'm changing right now i'm pivoting any advice on that like you know you got to accept this is no longer my life i'm in a new normal is anything beyond that you did was it creating a new outcome a new vision for your life or what was it what was it that helped you pivot what did you do i think i just uh relinquished control i'm and that was very hard for me i'm very type a i'm competitive i i want to compete with not only you but myself more than anyone and just kind of like relinquish that control and realize you know what i can't do everything i don't have all the answers i i want to continue to learn as we move into this uh into this life and i don't i feel like if i feel like i've learned everything i'm supposed to learn i need to move on to something else it's like my life has like pushed me into a place where like i'm learning things all over again and that's exciting and not not trying to like i said earlier not trying to compare myself to what i used to do i don't want to live in the past i have no control over the future what i have control over is right here and right now and like and that helps me that helps my that hamster that's in the wheel running around in my brain it helps that little hamster in my brain going like this all right just chill out it's gonna be okay and so yoga helps me do that and meditation helps me do that yeah because being present is so hard for achievers and competitive people and i think they just grabbed you and went all right dude this is it we're gonna have to give you a heart attack cardiac arrest or you weren't gonna change it's interesting i'm 50 now and i'm a controlled nut as well and i've just sort of started to surrender a little bit but to the moment and i say everybody to this i started just a little i'm still a nut i started just to surrender that you know what the truth is a lot of control i thought i had was a little bit of an illusion i was winning and being happy in spite of my control freak admission not because of it and here's the gift that you just said i'm learning a lot more when i'm trying to control everything i'm open to more things it's just there's a more beautiful part of the moment in my life than there ever was before because i was always just holding on to what i wanted to move and do and you feel the same way yeah absolutely it's like it's that white knuckle feeling right i'm just like i'm sure they're going like this i can do this whatever this is or whatever it is i can do it and i'm gonna figure it out but there's always been this like little phrase that my friends say say about me it's like bob will actually cut his nose off despite his face so it's like you know having that just um obsessive type thinking and what i really try to do and it's something i practice all the time it's not easy it's not easy for me to not get twisted about the big things in life or the little things and i have to make a make a conscious decision i have to think about it every single day and when challenges do come up for me and i i see myself kind of like uh white knuckling it again like oh there's that behavior and just like me acknowledging it it helps me to release it does that make sense a big time that's the best anyone's ever said it acknowledging it helps you release it because i talk a lot about when you're aware of something it loses its power and impact over you but i like the way you just said that a lot better i totally agree with that by the way those of you that are obsessive i think sometimes you know when you get to where bob and i are at life a little bit older you know it's a different season too some of you that are in your 20s and 30s and doing something you're like maybe maybe that obsessiveness that control thing maybe at that stage and that season is appropriate for where you are now absolutely it's like i think about when i started working on loser well that was 20 something years ago i was i did it for i did it for almost 20 years out of my life which was a really long time i had no time for anything i had no time for relationships i had no time for friends i had no time for anything other than work and i embrace that i just realized okay you know i've been given this uh this opportunity i'm going to take advantage of it i'm going to take it as seriously as possible and i did that and now i am kind of relaxing more and not feeling like i need to do it all right now before we start the interview with my next guest just want to remind you all that you can subscribe to the show on youtube or follow the show on apple or spotify we have all the links in our show notes you'll never miss an episode that way now on with the show all right everybody welcome back to max house today is going to be very very detailed stuff and it's going to be something that is going to impact you in the way that your brain works your body works your entire outlook on life is going to be different a very special man with me here today i guess he's a health and science journalist he's a podcaster he's a researcher what i know is he's brilliant and i was telling him off camera the iq gap between the two of us is rather significant today so i'm gonna pretend to hang with max today will be the most detailed information you've ever received on your life on food your body and how to make yourself more well is the way i would describe it so max lugavir welcome to the max show with ed my life great to have you great to be here and what an appropriate name i feel like we're really gonna max out today we are my son's name is max by the way too so it's very easy for me to remember your name we're preparing but i gotta say in preparation for this i'm blown away when i introduce guests you know i want to make sure i do it justice but also tell the truth i consider you one of a kind right now in the world in the way that you think you articulate the breakthroughs you've discovered already about the body the mind and how food in particular impacts it so today guys is gonna be very very special i want to talk at length well in some detail about you went there earlier and i'm glad we're gonna go we're gonna talk about what we put in our mouths now um and you said processed foods versus you know really healthy raw real foods real meats real greens what have you i eat like a lot of people i bet listen to the show if i started to add up how much processed food that i eat in a given day or week it's pretty scary i'm talking about protein bars protein chips things that i at least in my mind i think are healthy because you're getting protein low calorie really quick tastes pretty good it's a snack but i mean i i eat a ton of processed food why is that bad compared to eating what you i don't know what you would call it real food yeah yeah so i mean i think it's important to make a distinction right like processed food sort of has this really negative connotation associated with it especially these days but when you cook your food you're processing it so it's not necessarily the processing is like this this evil um this evil thing it's it's the ultra process when food has just become so uh pulverized and removed from its natural form it's hardly recognizable from its original form you know when you take a steak or something or a piece of like raw meat and you cook it and you're processing it when you put you know whole foods in a blender you're processing that food the problem with ultra processing which is what you know food industry does is it creates foods that are what are called what food scientists refer to as hyper palatable it becomes really difficult to moderate your consumption of those foods um these foods are designed to be over consumed by the time you've reached satiety when eating these foods you've already over consumed them you've already yeah they've shown this actually recently there was a national institute of health study uh led by obesity research and ken hall you can look up the study that found that when people were given an ultra processed diet um to consume ad libitum meaning like you were able to eat whatever you wanted until you reached the point of satiety they ended up eating a 500 calorie um surplus every single day wow when you know when just eating to feel full which is something that every human being wants to feel right when eating food i mean it's like uh it's a privilege and great thing to be able to feel full and something that we all want um when we're eating they in the crossover trial what they then did was that they gave these same subjects access to a minimally processed diet and to the same degree of satiety so so eating also until they were full and satiated they ended up eating a calorie deficit of 300 you know 300 something calories yeah so i mean that ultra processed food diet which by the way today is how most people are eating most of the time 60% of the calories that we consume today come from ultra processed foods that right there explains the obesity epidemic you know because because we're just constantly proximity to ultra processed foods where it's really difficult to pump the brakes on them we end up over consuming them and and the other problem these foods is that they're minimally nutritious so not only are we walking around you know with ever expanding waistlines one in two people by the year 2030 are going to be not overweight but obese and half of us are either type 2 diabetic or pre-diabetic 90% of us are deficient in at least one essential nutrient so we're overfed and we're undernourished and when you put those two features together that's why you're seeing accelerated aging you're seeing you know i think uh you know just you know just unprecedented rates of cardiovascular disease of you know certain cancers and of dementia i mean because the brain partakes in you know whatever's going awry in the body the brain suffers the consequences of that as well and these ultra processed foods is there an ingredient or two that must be avoided like hey this is really toxic and bad for your body we're looking at the list of ingredients and something chemicals in there is there one or two there's no no's well i love that you asked that question really really getting practical practical i think that the kinds of ingredients you really want to watch out for are refined grains so that's one and uh refined grain and seed oils so refined grains you know the wheat flour the rice flour um the you know the corn flour i mean i'm not dogmatic in my approach eating a piece of whole corn on the cob is one of my favorite things to eat in the summer you know i eat white rice on my sushi like i'm not dogmatic about like you know grains of the devil or anything like that but in these ultra processed foods i think refined grains really are problematic um i'll give you another reason why actually just because it's interesting when you eat uh say you eat a handful of whole nuts right and you look at the calories in you know on the back of the nut package or whatever you see whatever we'll just say it's 500 calories worth of whole nuts you're actually only absorbing about 70 of those calories because you know when you chew whole nuts the particles are too big to be fully digested it's a whole food you actually end up pooping out a significant amount of those calories when you eat yeah when you eat pulverized wheat corn rice flour in these ultra processed foods you're absorbing 100 of those calories not only that not only that i mean calories not really calorie when it comes to nutrition facts labels not only that but those calories get absorbed really rapidly and really high up in the small intestine so it basically sends your blood sugar through the roof before your body really even has an ability to you know you're still eating while your body's like you know what do we do with this sudden you know influx of sugar essentially so i think it's important to avoid foods that are based predominantly on those on those kinds of very very interesting so a couple things on going in our mouths again i've heard you talk about baby broccoli or broccoli sprouts and this is like something that's a sling here but it's not i don't understand like is it like sulfatine or the nrf2 pathways whatever the heck it is but i know a little bit right why is baby broccoli or broccoli sprouts way better than like broccoli in particular why that's a good question so when you chew broccoli sprouts or any cruciferous vegetable you basically break apart the cell walls where two chemicals that are kept in isolation in the plants unite in your mouth to create a new compound and that compound in the case of cruciferous vegetables uh is called sulforaphane and it's before yeah yeah it's considered an insect uh like an insecticide a natural insecticide that plants create right because plants can't you know tooth and nail their way out of you know being eaten right so what they do they practice chemical warfare and so they create these compounds that if you were a smaller critter maybe an insect a mouse a mold um the compound would make you sick and so you know when a mouse gnaws these plants um it creates it creates compounds you know so 14 is one of them but there's you know the plant kingdom is just full of these like natural uh defense defense chemicals um what we see is that sulforaphane in somebody like you or me you know big robust organism actually has a number of beneficial and protective effects via a mechanism called hormesis so hormesis is when you consume a plant compound and you know if you were to consume a lot of it it would be toxic but in small doses it actually has a beneficial effect so like a counterintuitive beneficial effect because here we have this toxic chemical but in small doses it's actually good for you the same thing actually applies to exercise you know you can exercise enough where it would kill you right it's a stressor on the body but in small doses exercise actually makes you more robust more resilient you know sing the praises about exercise you know for hours um but sulforaphane is great because it's been shown to increase levels of a compound in the body called glutathione which is the yeah it's the body's master detoxifier master antioxidant um it's uh being studied now as a means of um you know it's it's cancer protective effects it's also been um suggested in a small clinical trial i believe to produce symptoms of autism so for anybody that has that in the family i think it's worth looking into you know this is one of the many benefits of eating a varied diet that includes cruciferous vegetables okay glutathione i love glutathione so i can't explain this i'd like you to explain it to me so i do some i haven't done it in a while because of covid but while i'm traveling i get to plead i do ivy uh therapy even just sometime to get hydrated i'll take ivy uh hydration one i'd like your opinion on that actually two what's your opinion on that am i just all out or does it help but here's what i know when they put glutathione in my ivy something amazing happens to my body there's a calming effect um i can feel that i feel b12 when i put it in you know you get all wired the other stuff i don't really feel for some reason glutathione um i can feel better actually when it's in my body so do you recommend someone supplements with it why is that happening or am i crazy and what do you feel about ivy therapy uh yeah i don't i don't really recommend i don't make the recommendation of people supplement with glutathione i mean i have i take sometimes liposomal glutathione supplements but i you know i'm not i really i'm pretty convinced that uh you know supplements should be used very diligently and deliberately um based on your diet and uh and your specific you know deficiencies and you know even in some cases genes uh but no i generally don't recommend people um supplement with i just don't think you need to if you're eating a diet that is is supplying the raw materials for your own your body's own glutathione synthesis so sulfur containing amino acids is very important grass-fed beef eggs things like that you know anything with sulfur in it is actually going to be really good for you sulfur is a rate limiting um uh you know element in the synthesis of of glutathione so when you consume for example uh cysteine rich you know foods you're going to basically be supplying that um also glycine glycine is really important so it's one of the reasons why i think collagen is worth consuming and collagen is actually a supplement that i think is worth looking into because we don't tend to eat a lot of collagenous tissues at this point you know what you say on that you don't think that you break down those supplements in your stomach and you're never getting any benefit to taking something like i've had other people tell me hey you're taking a collagen supplement you're not getting it it's destroyed before it gets to you yeah you do break it down so it's not a one-to-one um you know it's not like you consume collagen and it becomes collagen in your joints yeah but you are increasing your supply of glycine which we don't consume top of um your average person consumes about two grams of glycine every single day and uh you create in your body another two grams of glycine and and that is why glycine is actually not considered an essential amino acid because we create it to some degree but um i don't think that we create enough for optimal health especially today when we consume lots of muscle meat and the reason for that is uh so there have been research calculations that that speculate that we need about 15 grams of it depends on you know your weight and what you're eating but 15 grams of glycine a day um and that our needs for glycine increase with higher uh consumption of another amino acid methionine which is more present in muscle meat um and we we use uh we use glycine to create um collagen so by not by not consuming adequate glycine again we only ingest about uh two grams of every single day um you might be actually limiting your body's ability to create to create collagen and collagen is super important i mean it's important for um i mean it's like the most abundant protein in the body and production of it declines as we get older it's important for the health of your you know your veins your arteries um so uh so yeah it's one of those things i think if you're not eating collagenous tissue um in animal products i think it's worth supplementing with okay by the way thank you i told everybody being like feverishly writing notes the cool thing about the show is listen to it in the car like all right well i'm gonna listen to it all the way back in the notepad i'll start writing all this stuff down so i really appreciate it that was a great conversation be sure to follow the ed my let show on apple and spotify links are in the show notes you'll never miss an episode that way welcome back to max out everybody my guest today is dr andrew huberman and he's a neuroscientist his lab is at stanford today's gonna be one of the more interesting shows for me that we've ever done before because i'm fascinated with this man's work and he's unique because although he's a brilliant person he's a neuroscientist he speaks in terms that people like me can understand and so he's got a very unique ability to understand information and articulate it in a very understandable and digestible fashion his lab and you can correct me if i say this wrong but his lab mainly studies two things which is really vision literally vision the workings of the retina and then secondly really different states of mind and um is that about accurate andrew would you say that's exactly accurate okay good and uh so today we're gonna stay on the ladder we're gonna talk today predominantly about states of mind growth states peak performance states and so i'm really honored to welcome dr andrew huberman to the show today welcome to max out brother thanks so great to be here it's an honor and privilege to be here so looking forward to our discussion i am as well and we could go so many different places and we will you're in your car listening to this on the treadmill is one you're gonna listen to twice or go over to youtube and watch it or vice versa because there's gonna be so many nuggets in here um blue and yellow light which you talk about that a minute when you're talking about you know getting eyes closed getting to sleep the impacts this is awesome right here everybody the real impact of blue and yellow light and its origins too yeah so let's start with the don'ts so here's why you don't want to view lights of any color blue or otherwise that are too bright between the hours of 11 p.m and 4 a.m the reason is there's a study published by my good friend who's head of the chronobiology unit at the national institute of mental health so he's a heavy hitter he found that blue lights and bright lights of all kinds in the middle of the night if you look at them too often there's a neuron in your eye that signals to a brain area called the habanula h-a-d-e-n-u-l-a that literally suppresses the amount of dopamine in the brain and gives depressive light symptoms and impairments in learning and memory for about two days that follow now if you look at some light once in a while in the middle of the night you go to the bathroom no big deal but if you're up in the middle of the night and looking at lights of any color not just blue light and those lights are bright enough you're going to suppress your dopamine levels and it can lead to bad places so on average try not to do that if you're a night shift worker you might want to use blue blockers blue blockers for some people can be helpful in just reducing the overall brightness of light in the evening but lowering the you know dimming the lights in the evening and actually setting lights low in your environment not having overhead lights is because the cells that read this stuff out are in the and single the brain in the lower half of the retina which is the upper visual field so that i suggest to almost everybody the flip side of that is during the daytime in particular within the first hour of waking you want to get as much bright light stimulation of your eyes as you possibly can you don't want it to ever be painful okay so if it's painful you're injuring the retina you don't want that but bright light ideally you get outside through a window you're only going to get about a thousand what's called about a thousand lux which is a measure of intensity of light outside it's about 50,000 even on a cloudy day in boston in winter you're getting more light through those clouds outside than you are with a bright light inside and it's very important because early in the day your brain needs to wake up your whole system your biology needs to wake up and it does that by releasing cortisol in a bump early in the day it's good cortisol release and it sets a timer so that melatonin which is a sleepy hormone comes on about 16 hours later we know from a lot of studies that if you don't get that right light during the early part of the day you get a second cortisol bump at 9 p.m and that second cortisol bump is very closely associated with anxiety depression feelings of kind of low low affect later so the things i'm talking about right now are slow they're slow acting they work over the course of days or weeks and so a lot of times it's like people will stay up late watching a movie till two or three in the morning fine do that enjoy life go out well you know now no one does that but when it's when it's safe to do it or whatever your protocol is enjoy life but if you're chronically getting a lot of light in the middle of the night and you're not getting a lot of bright light in your eyes early in the day you're wearing dark sunglasses all day you're coming inside and you're not getting that bright light simulation from sunlight you're setting yourself up for low affect and mental health issues and worse perhaps or at least just as that the habenula this brain has connections to the pancreas you start disrupting blood sugar rhythms and people start getting hungry in the middle of the night it's associated with type 2 diabetes there's a paper published in the journal nature last year so these two pieces of brain were designed to see objects but their first job was to tell the rest of the brain and nervous system and body when to be alert when to be awake how to run its digestive system its immune system get that bright light early in the day for just you know five ten minutes just go outside and get that bright light drag your kids out there you don't have to do it at sunrise you don't have to see the sun crossing the horizon but there's so much data to support this these behaviors that i'm talking about dozens if not hundreds of studies supporting this stuff so totally cost-free right none of this none of this involves buying anything but it does require some discipline very short intermission here folks i'm glad you're enjoying the show so far don't forget to follow the show on apple and spotify links are in the show notes now on to our next guest welcome back to the program everybody okay you ready you want to live to 200 years old the year i just said would you like to live to 200 years old would you settle for 150 right well this man doesn't want to settle for 150 doesn't settle for 120 and i'm fascinated because there's so many mutual friends he's an author he's got a book out called the science and technology of growing young by sergey young to give you an idea what his name is because i just finished this book in two days he's a longevity expert he's a benjamin button of planet earth right now he's also founded the longevity vision fund which is a fund dedicated to technologies that can extend lives and the quality of lives so i'm so excited to have this man here this is gonna be a compelling note-taking awesome vision stretching conversation sergey young welcome to the program hi everyone i'm so excited to be here with you today call my brother all right so let's we're gonna talk about things that exist now that can help people live longer yeah we'll talk about some things that are on that 10-year horizon like you'd like to do and then maybe 20 30 years out but first off why do you have this belief because average life expectancy now is around 78 years old somewhere around there what makes you believe that over the next couple decades people may live to 150 years old maybe even 200 years old what gives you hope and belief that that's possible yeah so basically this exponential power of technologies which finally arrived to this world like the science i mean could have been exist 30 50 years ago but like it's a combination of technology and science which brings us this this hope and this desire and finally ability to live longer like 30 years ago like u.s spent three billion dollars of government money to sequence one human genome right and 13 years right now just a few hours right and a couple of hundred dollars again 20 years ago this crisper thing was available to handful literally handful of people who have really serious genetic disease they're like really unlocking genetic lottery and today we all you know part of global experiment of gene therapy you know if you look at mreni vaccines which is the like modernized outcome of gene therapy so that's amazing and uh full disclosure like like like the first time that we will be able to check like what what's what's the life maximum lifespan extension that we'll do it's going to be really far away from here so i'm 49 so to check if i can break the sound barrier of the maximum lifespan of 122 years that we have today in the world guys we will need to kind of stick together for another 73 years it's going to be amazing 73 years and we don't know how the world will look like in 73 years so like it's it's all about aspiration it's all about getting the message across and the message is we're all going to be living longer or radically longer in this world so let's just be prepared for that