Hooked on the First Line | 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' with Cal Fussman

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altucher Show. The word decision is from the Latin de meaning from, and kadiris means to cut. So when you make a real decision about something, you cut away the possibility of anything else but that thing happening. So there was no other option for me. It's either this or nothing. And just to be clear, you had herniated discs that were kind of like, I forget which ones. L5 and, L5, s1, and l4. My final physician gave me the same bill of goods that there was nothing that I could do. And I had to make a decision. Am I gonna live with this? Or am I gonna do something about it? And I realized that over two and a half years, I had given up my power to do anything about my health. Because I was waiting for somebody to tell me what to do. I was waiting for somebody to tell me that they can help me. And I realized I really have to learn about the body itself. It set in place a series of events. I put a strategy together. I put together a 60 day protocol. Which I think is an important thing. I think it's good to think about it in terms of short term increments. For small businesses that don't have an HR expert, payroll and benefits can be such a pain, but thankfully, Gusto has your back. Gusto offers the best clear and automated payroll for the modern small business, including everything from unlimited and off cycle payrolls to direct deposit, multiple states and pay rates. Gusto can help you with all of your payroll needs. And you can even integrate it with your accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero. Gusto is a streamlined platform that lets you take care of your team with just one login and one password to remember. Sign up for Gusto today. Go to gusto.com/james and get started with 1 month of payroll. Oh my god. I have Sean Stephenson from the Model Health Podcast, my favorite health podcast. Also, the author of Sleep Smarter, 21 Proven Strategies to blah blah blah. Sleep sleeping well. But I don't wanna talk about sleep so much because I've already spoken to Arianna Huffington about sleep. Yeah. We're gonna talk about sleep a little. Okay. What I wanna talk about is you have the most popular health podcast out there, and it's that way for a reason. I'll let you speak in a second. But you were 20 years old. You, like, first broke your hip. You were overweight. You were, diagnosed with a a debilitating, you know, bone degenerative disease that was never gonna get cured. Your doctor kept telling you you were gonna have to eat pills for the rest of your life. And you decided you you chose yourself. You decided you were gonna take your health under your own control. Now look at you. You're in total health, and you're you're focused on health. Your whole career is around, you know, training and podcasting and writing about health, and you wrote The Spoke About Health. So what what happened? What happened when you were 20? Oh my goodness. You know, it was really I listen to your podcast every day, by the way. That's the greatest you have a new episode. That's the greatest honor. I appreciate that so much, James. Well, for me, it started off it I don't know if people are the people who are familiar with the NFL combine, that whole spiel. But when I was 15 years old, I ran a 4.5 in a 40 yard dash. So I ran a 4540, which is just bottom line for people who don't know about that. It's ridiculously fast. What's the what's the world record for 40 yards? It's around 4.2. So you were point 3 seconds from the world record Yeah. When you were how old? 15. Yeah. 15. But there's a lot of people that can run that, but it's mostly college NFL level. Yeah. And so things were looking good for me. You know, schools were were looking at me and all that good stuff. And it was actually during track practice. That was 2 sport athlete, and I was doing a 200 meter time trial. It's basically half the track sprinting. And as I was coming off the curve into the straightaway, my hip broke. And that really set a chain of events. And me being a hard headed young man, I kept coming to practice for a few days. With your hip broken? Yes. Yes. Like your hip was detached from what? What does it mean the hip's broken? Like, the bone itself is cracked? So there's different places that the hip can break. For me, it was called the iliac crest. It's kinda like the tip at the at the tippy top of your hip. And so I just thought maybe I pulled a muscle, which I did, but when I pulled the muscle, part of the bone came with it. And my physician at the time, he put me through stand what's called standard of care. And he gave me some NSAIDs, told me to stay off the leg. Cool thing was he did give me a Whirlpool thing that I could take home and, you know, add to our little crappy bathtub. But and then I got a What does that mean? You put, like, a pill in the bathtub? No. It's like, it's like a hookup. It's like a little device you hooked into the bathtub, and it's got, like, a little jet and moves it around. I didn't know I'd talk about that today. Okay. Note to my assistant, get Whirlpool hookup for my bath. Alright. Go ahead. And so, you know, being 16 years old, you've got the hormones of, like, a Greek god at the time. So chances are you're going to get better, and I did. But that led to a string of other injuries, about a dozen injuries, and my career was pretty much over. It wasn't until I was 20 that I got that diagnosis. But wait. So so when you say your career was over, like, you obviously had spent your whole childhood hoping to be Yeah. An athlete. And you and you had, like, a a an unusual childhood. You grew up part of your 1st 6 or 7 years of your life with your grandparents. Yeah. And then and that was in the kind of a suburban nice area. And then you moved in with your mom who was who was very young when she had you. You moved in with your mom and your stepdad, and that was in a rougher area, more gang driven area. So was your hope to kind of use athletics to kind of get out of, this sort of bad area? Yeah. That's it's really it's really about environment for a lot of us. You know? I'm a big believer in that that our environment dictates a lot about us. But being humans, we also can create our environment. But we have to become aware of that. And so my examples for a lot of people who grew up in the inner city, same thing. You know, I'll be an athlete. I'll get into music. And that's pretty much the big options that you have. And so that was my track. However, I did have that environment earlier on where my grandmother really instilled in me the importance of education. And she really made me love learning, and she made me love writing. I had my little Garfield writing book, and she would teach me how to do my letters, and I just fell in love with it. And so but luckily, that stuck with me. But you know how things kinda circle back around. I was lost for a time period there when I was 20. I was in college, but because of the embarrassment of gaining so much weight How much did you gain? About £50. So how much did you weigh altogether? I was right around hovering around £200. £200. How tall are you? Yeah. I'm about 5 8. 5 8, £200. So you were you were fat? Yeah. I was Like, did you get a girlfriend when you were I see. I actually had 2. That's a funny story. Yeah. Yeah. I was terrible. I was I was terrible. I had, You must have had, like, some smooth talking, though. Yeah. You know? But, you know, I had, like, my day shift and my night shift, and I kinda worked around my my work schedule, school schedule. It was terrible, man. But that was a part of the healing process, you know, because it's not just the physical symptoms. It's also understanding that your relationships matter a lot in determining what's going on with your body. And to just give an example of that, if you're carrying around a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, which I definitely was trying to manage 2 girlfriends and not let them bump into each other. Yeah. You're it's like you have to kind of manage 2 entire lives. Yes. Like, you're you're at least a third or 50% of your thinking is involved in, like, keep these 2 people away from each other, and how do you decide, and so on. Yeah. Exactly. Not that I have any experience with this one. But also is this lack of love that I have for myself, you know. And this was, Is that when you say that, is that because you felt like you needed 2 girls to love you to fill this hole? Yes. And maybe, like, when you moved in with your mom and the the the crazy family situation, you kinda had this hole of who actually is there to love you. Yeah. Exactly. That's that you just said it perfectly. And this is something that's also ingrained in the culture as well, you know, to have a lot of girlfriends, to have kids when you're young. It was just a again, a product of the environment, and I thought that that's something I was just supposed to do. And my mother never really gave me any insight into it. You know, it's just kind of the life that she lived is the life that I would fall into naturally. But I kind of woke up to that and seeing just how I was mistreating myself. I was mistreating other people. And but all of this really came to a head, and this was this is very important moment, because most people never do this. So two and a half years go by. I'm 22 and a half at this point. And every single night, I'm medicating myself just to sleep. You know, I'm taking this c**ktail of Celebrex and, Tylenol PM. It just seemed to work for me. What's Celebrex? Is that for depression? Or No. So that is, kinda anti arthritic. I see the pain relief. Your doctor told you, if I remember correctly, that you had the spine of an 80 year old. Yeah. So is this the sort of drug an 80 year old takes for their for their back? Yes. To put it bluntly. And here's the crazy thing is that I had no idea at this point that my taking Celebrex was leading to my sleep problems as well because it caused something called restless leg syndrome which didn't have a name then. This was back around 2,000, 2,001. And so every night, I'd lay down to go to sleep, and it's just like my legs wouldn't just stop. Right. I strangest thing. I've gone out with someone with rest restless leg syndrome. You literally flop around the bed. Yeah. It was it was crazy. And, you know, that was a symptom that I just thought was, you know, just something that just happens. I'd never thought to even ask anybody about it. Long story long, can I get a drink real quick? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is that good, BPA free mountain valley. What's BPA stand for? Bisphenol a. Is that is that in a lot of water? It's what it is, it's, it's a compound found in plastic. And what's so fascinating is it functions in nature like a xenoestrogen. So So it's like an estrogen that can attach to your estrogen receptor sites and turn on programs. Sean, everything has estrogen in it. You can't eat a chicken without having estrogen. You can't drink water now without having estrogen. Yeah. It's What can I do? What should I drink? Just out of the faucet? What what should I do? Tell me on the water, and then we'll get back to your story. Sure. There's a ton of things that you could do. The optimal choice is, for most people in our modern society is to get water that's bottled in glass, you know, and there's a lot of places that can deliver that because it's really what the water is stored in. So water is known as a universal solvent. Right? So whatever that means whatever it touches, it kinda integrates with. That's how you can make, like, Kool Aid. Right? Or tea or coffee. It integrates with the substance. And plastic is something that it doesn't biodegrade, it photodegrades. So basically, light can break plastic down, and it makes sort of like a plastic tea with the water. And so when you consume that, having the bisphenol a and some some of the other different things that are coming to light now, it integrates with the water. And when you drink that, it's basically like drinking estrogen water in a way. It's like a estrogen supplement because it can attach to your estrogen receptor sites and turn on programs that are related to estrogen. So, yeah, it kinda sucks. So I sometimes feel and then I I wanna get back to your story, but I sometimes feel there are so many things to remember in our modern like Yeah. Modern society is all about it's more about feeding 7,000,000,000 people than feeding 7,000,000,000 people in a healthy way. It's more like about how to handle starvation through all this sort of chemical farming and and so on and and and non organic farming, which I'll give it credit. It has succeeded in feeding 7,000,000,000 people around the world, the the modern scientific techniques with farming. But at the same time, a 100% of things seem unhealthy. Like, you can't eat anything in the modern diet. Yeah. It's it's so interesting that agriculture is what has allowed us to be sitting here right now talking through a microphone, you know. At the same time, it also created a lot of degenerative diseases because we're no longer doing the things that our genes expect us to do, you know. But I feel like there's no solution because, like, I didn't know this. There's probably a 1,000 things I don't know, and we're not gonna be able to cover them all in this podcast. And I'm not even gonna remember them all if I read a book on them. So there's just too much to remember. Where do you go? What do you do? It's a simp really simple principle, And that's what governs everything that I do and what has made what I do so successful is, of course, I do give the the why and the and the how and the what and all the stuff behind the scenes. But how can we just make this applicable and easy, you know? And so this goes back to a principle to do things as close to how we were designed as we can. It's really as simple as that. So when it comes to our food, what have we eaten the longest amount of time that we are aware of? And that's gonna get back to, you know, the produce, you know, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, various proteins, some dairy for some people depending on if they have the enzyme to be able to break it down properly. And then, tubers, roots, things of that nature as well. What's a tuber? So, like, potato. Right? So, yam. Oh, yeah. You're you're the sweet potatoes. Yeah. Sweet potatoes are pretty fantastic. But I growing up, I would have never ate them. Alright? I had this because of that pan of whatever with the marshmallows, like, I thought that's what it was. And so I never ate sweet potatoes until recently. A few years ago, I started eating them. So if we can just eat what an indigenous person if they were to come into your kitchen and look around and that they can still recognize as normal food. Right? So that, plus, if we look at water, what have our ancestors done that didn't kill them? Right? So they would find fresh springs. And that is something that's still a viable practice, and so there's actually a website. It's called find a spring.com, and people can go there and find springs that are in their local area and go out and harvest your own water. And, of course, it's immediately gonna become a defensive mechanism or fear around that. Like, are you sure this water is safe? The fascinating thing is that the water that's coming from a true spring has been underground in aquifers incubating for 100 of years. So it's literally never seen pollution. Okay. But I'm in New York City, so there's, like, no natural springs. So if I go into the store so, a, should I drink water out of the faucet? Or when I go into the store, what should I buy? I can't buy that. I never saw that in the store before. I'm pointing to what Sean was dragged out of. It's because also you weren't looking. You know, your locus of focus wasn't on something like this because it does look like, what is that? You know, when you see it. So this actually I just got this from Whole Foods on the way over here. Alright. Mountain Valley. Mountain Valley. And then there's some other ones as well. How do you know that wasn't shipped in plastic? It's a there's still gonna be a trust factor unless you're doing it yourself. Yeah. You know, and that's just the nature of the beast today. You know? So and with the water. So, going to a spring, harvesting that, again, it hasn't seen pollution, hasn't seen the industrial revolution. A secure purest, cleanest thing that you'll ever experience in your life. Outside of that, if we look at because people might, you know, compare that to what about the stuff coming through our faucet isn't that much safer. I did an episode of the model health show where we really broke down and and, dissected this whole process of how we're getting our water. And many people aren't aware that about 40 there was a study that was done recently in 40,000,000 household in the US. They tested their water, and they found significant traces of things like, antidepressant medications, chemotherapy drugs, statins in their water. How does antidepressant medications get in the water? To put it bluntly, people piss it out. Right? So it's coming out in human waste, and it is getting recycled back into, our water system. You know, when we do have great systems for treating water and recycling water, this is where chlorine comes in, which basically kills everything. But the problem with that is that it kills everything. Alright? It's a pretty strong antibiotic, so it can just destroy your your, microbiome, you know, your, kinda rainforest in your gut. It doesn't care if it's a good bacteria or bad bacteria. And so that's something to be aware of as well. It's not a good idea to just drink, you know, same thing if we go to a swimming pool. You know, a lot of us feel kinda like hazy or exhausted. It just pulls a lot out of you. It's even used for, certain types of chemical warfare, you know, compounds related to chlorine. It's so true. After I go swimming, like, let's say it's a hot summer day, I go swimming. Yeah. I'm exhausted after swimming. Yeah. Basically, kind of it's it's, it's a little bit of, like a little chlorine bomb that you get hit with. And your skin absorbs even more than what you consume, via drinking it. So if you're taking a shower even in No. I don't do that. No. I'm just kidding. So that's another thing to look at, like maybe getting a shower filter. And a lot of these things are they're super inexpensive. It's just being aware of them. So okay. So so you're 22 and a half years old. You've been going you've been taking these pills. You're you're still overweight. You've been having all these problems. What's happening in your life then? I was definitely in a pretty strong state of depression. I was definitely, I felt the lack of of purpose, to kinda put it bluntly. I didn't really know what to do with myself. You just graduated college then? Or No. I was still in college. And I'd actually, at this point, I should be getting close to graduation or have graduated, because I started when I was 17. But because of the embarrassment factor, because of the difficulty just getting around, I went from a 12 credit low to 9, to 6 to 3 to barely hanging on with that one cla*s. And, so it extended out my and that happened multiple semesters. Mhmm. Right? And extended out my my college experience. But that really all changed when I kind of, I woke up to the fact of and ironically, it was my grandmother. You know, that first experience. I was sitting on the edge of my bed with my 2 pill bottles in my hand. And, you know, she's about to take my drugs and go to sleep. And this was after I had and, please, anybody who's listening to this, make sure if you get a diagnosis with a chronic illness, make sure you get a second, third opinion at least. Because I would have done back surgery in a heartbeat just to get out of pain because I was so uneducated. Yeah. And just to, be clear, you had 2 herniated discs that were cut like I forget which ones. L 5 and, l 4 s l l 5, s 1, and l 4. Yeah. And they were kind of, I guess I guess what happens, they get merged together or they get sort of So they get compressed so so much that they kind of spill out Mhmm. To one side of your spine. Mhmm. And so that compression and how it was spilling out was pushing against the nerves that basically run down my leg. And so surgery could potentially uncompress them or what you did. There's different types of surgery. The problem is the vast majority we're talking over 80% of people who have back surgery have another surgery because it's creating so much new instability. Your body wasn't designed to be that way. And so, you know, they can go in and basically, they can cut off part of the disc that's hanging out, which is like, why would you do that? They can do a spinal fusion. Just take out the disc and fuse those 2 vertebrae together. Mhmm. So the options aren't that pretty, but I would have done it just to get out of pain. And so I had a decision to make because my final physician gave me the same bill of goods that there was nothing that I could do about this. I'm sorry, son. You know, you're just gonna have to live with this. And I had to make a decision. Am I gonna live with this? Or am I gonna do something about it? And I realized that over those two and a half years, I had given up my power. Like, I'd totally given away my power to do anything about my health because I was waiting for somebody to tell me what to do. I was waiting for somebody to tell me it was gonna be okay, or that they can help me. And I realized that if I'm going to do anything about it, I really have to learn about the body itself. You know, I have to learn about I've never even asked a question. What is my spine made of? Like, if I'm missing all of these minerals to, you know, that they might my bones are you know, I have this degenerative bone disease. What do I need to regenerate it? Right? If it's d degeneration, what's regeneration? And so, a really interesting thing happened that most people never do. And I was gonna say this earlier, but when most people wanna get in shape or they want to transform their their their health, you know, maybe, you know, they're scrubbing struggling with diabetes or heart disease, they they don't really make a decision to get well. They don't make a decision to to get to change it. And so what I mean by that is most of the time, it's wishful thinking. Like, I'll give this a try. We'll see what happens. I hope this works. That's another big one. Well, what's an example? You're saying, like, let's say I have, high blood pressure, and the doctor says, why don't you take this drug? You you you're saying people just sort of say, okay. We'll try this as opposed to Exactly. How can I make myself better from the inside as opposed to taking something external? Exactly. Exactly. And, also, the the mental component behind that is it's very disempowering. Like, if I'm gonna try something, it's kinda like Yoda. You know, you either do or you don't. There is no try Right. Kind of thing. And I really decided to get well. Like, I made a huge decision, like, no matter what happens, I'm going to get better than I am right now. Period. Nothing's gonna stop me. And I'm a big fan of lexicon, so the word decision is from the Latin de meaning from and kydir, which means to cut. So when you make a real decision about something, you cut away the possibility of anything else but that thing happening. So there was no other option for me. It's either this or nothing. And so and this was it wasn't like, you know, a miracle happened in that moment, but it kinda did. It set in place a series of events. I'm a very analytical person, as you know from my show. And I'm really I'm a scientist, you know. It's just kinda in my core. So I put a strategy together. It wasn't like, oh, this thing's gonna happen. I mapped out what am I gonna do over the next 8 weeks, basically. You know, I put together a 60 day protocol, which entailed But by the way, which I think is an important thing. I think people say, okay. I'm gonna switch my life habits now forever. I think it's good to think about it in terms of short term increments. So you can at least give yourself a chance to try things out as opposed to have this huge mental bottleneck. Oh my gosh. I'm changing my life forever. Like, I think it's good to to to think to yourself, I'm trying something for a while as opposed to forever. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. That, I I think it's a big part of why people don't take action is there's so much there's not really an on ramp. Mhmm. And it's kinda like That's a good way to put it. You know, and so making it easier for people and making things so that, it's much more appealing to our very limited thinking as humans. Like, we basically can somewhat think about tomorrow outside of that. It's kinda it starts to get hazier, hazier and hazier. And so with that, approach, it was 3 main things that I focused on. And me being a former athlete, the main thing I knew about was fitness, you know. So it was kinda low hanging fruit. So, I knew that I need to do something. And this is a really important takeaway is that your body requires movement in order to heal itself. Alright. Your body requires movement in order to heal itself. And funny enough, I came across a study that was done on resources. And, you know, this is, like, a multimillion dollar business. And that's one of my childhood memories is, unfortunately, my my quality time with my stepfather was, you know, we go to the track and, you know, gamble or whatever. I get to play a few video games. But it was so boring, man, just waiting around for those horses to run. But anyways, multimillion dollar business. And if the horse gets, a broken bone, this could be grounds to lose the horse. Right? And so there's a vested interest to make sure that they have a strong bone density. So they had the control group, they did nothing. And they had the test group, they had 2 test groups. 1 of the test groups, they gave the horses supplements to increase their bone density, and it did increase their bone density. But the other group that they gave the supplements and walked the horses had an even higher bone density. So it's like, what is going on there? Well, this is really what the core of exercise is. Exercise is not about having a 6 pack or being, you know, having a Brazilian bubble butt. Alright? Those are, like, those are symptoms. Right? Those are side effects of the exercise, potentially. The real essence of exercise is derived from the word exorcism, which really means to get things out of you. Right? It's really about detoxification and assimilation. So by the horses moving, their cells were better able to assimilate those nutrients. Same thing held true for me. So understanding that I need to change what I was eating, which I'll come back to, that movement was a huge component because your body, again, requires movement in order to heal itself so it can assimilate all the nutrients I'm bringing in. Part 2 was the nutrition. You know? So right nutrition. I have a question about the movement. Sure. So and and exercise. So, and this, like, I by the way, I I didn't mean to say we weren't gonna talk about your your book at all. The the sleep smarter book is not just about sleep. It's really about all these things that you're discussing. And you sort of suggest that and then I always think this about health in general. Like, people sometimes talk about, okay. Well, now you have to do, 50 reps of this and 40 reps of that. Mhmm. But sometimes it's really important for for the average person to just understand, hey. If you walk 20 minutes a day, that's better than what you were doing before. And if you walk 20 minutes, as you say in the in the book, between 6 and 8 in the morning, so you get, like, the the the best dose of sunlight, that's gonna even be better than what you were doing before. So I think it's important, not that this is like, oh, this is the minimum viable thing you need to do, but it's extremely valuable to just do movement at least. Like, it's it's a it's maybe that on a scale of 0 to 10, that's a 9. And then I'm making this up. And then from 9 to 10 is lifting all the weights and running on the treadmill and all that. I don't know. I'm I'm making up that that scale. But, movement itself is incredibly important. Absolutely. And that's the thing. It's just like, if you're not moving your body, just basic movement, like you just said 20 minutes a day, just walking, then you're sort of like a a a cesspool in a way because your body is not able to number 1, like, let's move this to actually a a specific aspect of what your body is doing. So you have something called the lymphatic system. Right? So a lot of people know about the circulatory system, which is how, you know, your heart is moving, this blood throughout your entire body, you know, moving oxygen, nutrients, things like that. But you have 4 times more lymph fluid than you have blood. And so this is kinda this extracellular fluid. What is lymph okay. Go ahead. So this extracellular fluid is really it's kinda like your body's internal sewage system. Alright? And the key is your your circulatory system has a pump, a glorified pump in your heart. Your lymphatic system has no pump. It only moves when you move. So literally, that system begins to become stagnant and waste builds up in your tissues when you don't move. It's kinda like a one way valve system, like, basically from your feet up to your collarbone. And it's like one way valve so that each step just say each step you take, it moves up maybe a few centimeters until the the, the lymph can finally get back up past your collarbone and back and dump back into your system. So so so put it in in terms of, like, how much does the average person actually move, and how much should they move? This is really tough. Let me start from the where most people are at. They think that I should exercise an hour a day. Right? If you exercise at a gym an hour a day and then you park your butt at your desk the rest of the hours, and or in your car, and or on your couch, and or back in bed, then you're only 4% more active than the rest of the sedentary non active population. And we call this percentage of people, we call them the active sedentary. Right? Because it's not about and that's but that's better than nothing for sure, that our day is incredible. However, it's really about trying to integrate having a life of movement. Like you said, apparently, you walk up, like, 27 flights of stairs to get up here to see you. And so because I was, like, a little sketchy about the the elevators here and some of the buildings at NYC. You know, some of them were kinda shaky, and, you know, it's a nice hotel. And I walk into the elevator. It's like I'm back in the forties. I'm just like, is this gonna be okay? And there never seems to be anybody in the elevators that I get into either. That's a whole other story. But it's it's just things like that, choosing to take the stairs instead. And people heard this before and said the escalator or the elevator when it whenever appropriate. Instead of just sitting there watching television, maybe you can hop if you do have a treadmill, like, that you never use, maybe you just put the TV on and walk a little bit while you're doing that or I I love this this tool. It's called a rebounder. I don't know. Do you guys have one? No. No? Oh my goodness. So the rebounder is a mini it's a little small trampoline. And I've been using it for years. I my kids love it too by for obvious reasons. But, I I love it because NASA, these are literal rocket scientists, say that this is the best form of exercise for humans. You're kidding. No. I'm not. How big is the trampoline? It's that big. Can't you, like, jump off it and kill yourself? Break a neck? Jump off anything and kill yourself. We could jump off of this desk right now and But I'm not going to I like, you're specifically jumping in the chair. I got you. I got you. Touche. Touche. But, yes, of course, you I mean, you can get injured, but, I mean, it's it's like you're not trying to jump and try and, you know, do a stunt. Right? It's just there's 2 basic forms of the jumping on the mini trampoline. It's called the health bounce. It's, quote, health bounce. Your feet literally don't even have to move off of the trampoline, and that's exercising your lymphatic system. And what NASA found is basically all of your cells are kinda doing like push ups in a way because it's anti gravity and gravity. Right? For a moment, you're weightless. Right? And so this is it's something called g forces generated. And so I like to do that while, you know, I'm listening to a podcast and maybe watching a show. I'll hop on the mini trampoline for a little bit and, get some little benefit that way. So but back to the nutrition aspect. So the movement was important, but the food was really a huge key as well. And, again, I asked that question, okay. What is my spine actually made of? What are my bones actually made of? Because I never thought about it before. And when you think about bones, what nutrient do you think of? I don't even know. I think maybe iron. I don't I have no idea. Most people say calcium. Uh-huh. Okay. Because of the milk mustache, cold, you know, market Women and menopause, I think of that. So your thinking is a little bit more in-depth than other people, you know, but for most people, it's like calcium is the big bone builder. Right? Calcium builds strong bones. It was in the advertisement. But you know what though? I would never think here's what I would never think. I think that my bones are kind of there from the beginning. Mhmm. And that food is never added to my bones. That's how I think of it. Like, I never think of a connection between food and bones. Yeah. That's fascinating. You know? And a lot of you know what's so crazy? Is that your bones literally you know, if you think about your body when you were a kid, which is maybe when you're 16, were so radically different. You literally those bones are totally different. They've been made over, a a number of times. Like, after 7 years say that, but is that is that really like so, like, every 7 years, supposedly every cell in your body is different. Is that coming from the food you ate during those 7 years? Well, this is the power the powerful thing about food. So a big takeaway from today is to understand this is that food isn't just food. It's information. You know? So every bite of food that you eat is eliciting, an array of programs. Right? So one of the things I've been studying for over 10 years is something called nutrigenomics. And so this is a basic this this field of science is looking at how every bite of food that you eat is an epigenetic influence. Have you talked about epigenetics before on the show? So for many years, we were indoctrinated with this idea that our genes control our life. Our genes control our health, our genes control whether or not we have a disease. But recently, a field of science called epigenetics has really been brought to the forefront, and epigenetics looks at what's epi basically means above. So, like, your epidermis. Right? It's above the dermis. Epigenetics means above genetic control. So there's something above genetic control, but what the hell is that? That's So so does that does that sort of imply that, okay, I have certain parents and they have certain parents. So I have some genetic tendencies. Yeah. But then I have some things in my control beyond genetics. Not just some things. We're looking at over 80% of your genetic expression. It determined upon your choices in life, which is just crazy. And so and one of those big epigenetic influences is sleep. It might be the biggest one, which we can come back to. But looking at nutrigenomics and what kind of expression, what kind of changes this thing is going to have when I bring in different things to kinda regenerate my tissues, was really fascinating to me. And so asking the question about the the bones, I found out about magnesium, sulfur bearing amino acids, polysaccharides, all these things I never heard of. I might have heard some of them in biology class, but a big reason that it's hard for kids to learn and is because it doesn't relate to you. Right? It doesn't relate to your life. But it really all of a sudden, it really mattered to me. And so it all made sense. Really fascinating. Like, they should almost make a periodic table of elements that clearly defines what the most important uses are for each element in survival. Yeah. So, like, you know, hydrogen, helium is the creation of stars and planets and all that kind of stuff. But, like, magnesium or calcium, these are things that are important in our diet. And, you know, uranium is for nuclear bombs. Like, they should kind of divide up the table of, periodic, you know, table of elements in in in kind of subject matters. If they do that, you know, if you can create more of a connection for the kids this is why the show is so successful. It's making it make sense and apply to your life. But a little fun fact about the periodic table developments that since you brought it up. So that's measuring the ash. That's taking the nutrient and basically burning it. Right? And then looking at what it what does it do. Right? But that's not how it functions in nature. It's not burnt in nature. You know, if you look at, magnesium, for example, there's not just one form of magnesium. It can be changed depending on how it's treated. Like, if you do cook the magnesium, it's gonna change in how your body relates to it versus if it's in a natural form and say, you know, a piece of spinach or whatever. Or even if it's frozen, it's going to change. Right? There's this whole spectrum that can influence what that magnesium can do. Plus, there's something called, this kind of phytonutrient combining. Right? This is a new term. And looks at how other nutrients make other nutrients work, How other nutrients increase or decrease assimilation of of the other nutrients that are there in the food. This is why food is so smart. Right? A lot of times, food has certain nutrients together that helps you to assimilate them. Right? But if you isolate them, like taking a so called multivitamin, how do you know your body is actually gonna get that stuff? And plus, it's probably in a synthetic form, the the kind of, quote, cooked form, the kind that you're looking at on the table of elements, not which you would interact with in real life. Alright? So that's why we wanna go food first for nutrients. And then if we are supplementing, which I do recommend supplementing, especially today where there's just a lot of deficiencies. And like you said earlier, like, it's just difficult to to do all this stuff. But make sure that your supplements are created in an ethical fashion. Right? That they're using earth grown nutrients, not synthetic forms. So food food based supplements. I think that's really important. And, also, if you can, make sure that they are, cold processed, if you can. What do you mean by cold processed? So that means that they're so one of the the things that I mean, I learned this, you know, over 10 years ago that there's this shift that happens, you know. And so the big thing, especially in, like, people that know about raw food, is at a 118 degrees. Right? A 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Upwards of a 100% of the enzymes in that food are gonna be destroyed. And so enzymes are kind of these, these little lock and keys in process. So they're like little keys that unlock processes. And so you lose a lot of that ability of your body to assimilate that food without enzymes being present. So if it's cooked so cooked food, you're saying, could potentially not be assimilated as well as uncooked food. But I don't agree with that. Okay. That's the thing. So this 118 degrees like, cooking is what has enabled us to be here. Right? This is another advantage for human beings. However, we do have to understand that some nutrients are better are gonna be better for us and better assimilated if they're not if they're not cooked to process. So there is a chemical change that happens with magnesium, with calcium, all those things when they're cooked. That doesn't mean that you can't assimilate them. So that's it's just keeping all this stuff in perspective. And then how do we do this? We eat some cooked food, and we eat some non cooked food. Just make sure we get a mixture of that in our diet. And then another category would be some fermented foods. These are kinda like these really biologically active, and I would have never in a 1000000 years you wouldn't have caught me when I was a kid eating sauerkraut. I mean, that was like, you might as well just punch me in the face. I would not eat. There's no way I could eat something. Fermented? Yeah. So that's a fermented veggie. So it's fermented cabbage. And there's kimchi. There's pickles. You know, a lot of people like pickles. There's, kefir. Right? And a lot of people know about kombucha. Super hot on the streets. Right? Kombucha. So there's a lot of different there's beverages and foods, yogurt. But when we're getting these things, we wanna look at ask the question, is this what my ancestors would have eaten? Taking all the fat out of the yogurt, is that natural? No. Not really. Adding a bunch of sugar to it, is that natural? No. Not really. You know? So it's just how can we get the real thing? You know, maybe from and it's another thing that I've been really impressing in the culture is that it's not you are what you eat. It's not just you are what you eat. It's you are what you eat ate. What do you mean? So with you are what you eat, it's just basically, you know, I'm eating this piece of chicken and, you know, it becomes a part of me. Alright? This kinda goes back to the original thing of, when I'm eating this food, it's so fascinating to understand when you're looking at that pizza piece of pizza, it's actually gonna become a part of your body. Right? And we don't really get that. Right? It's just like, do I actually want this pizza to become part of my, you know, my nipple or whatever? You know, the pepperoni I just thought about pepperoni and never mind. That's why you focus on the nipple. Yeah. It just So we get to make that decision. It's very empowering. You know? But at the same time, when you start to dissect these things and you look at what's going on with the yogurt, for example, you are what you eat versus you are what you eat ate. It's asking, okay. So I have this final product here. But what this cow eat that created the yogurt? Right? Was this a healthy cow? Or was it a cow that might have the human equivalent of leukemia? Which you find about 80% of the factory farmed, you know, cows that are raised on these factory farms have that human equivalent of this blood disease. You're kidding. I'm not kidding. 80% of cows have leukemia that are in the farms that we get Factory farms. Factory farms? Yeah. The the the cow equivalent of that. Also, you know, tumors, things like that. And they all have antibiotics. Right. They have to have antibiotics because they would be just, cyclically ill. Mhmm. You know? And so it's it's they're hacking the system because that creates a whole other problem where, their immune system they start to develop these superbugs just like we would if we stay on antibiotics and what we've done as well. Same thing. And they wanna get them as big as possible as fast as as they can. And so, you know, growth hormones and things like that have been added. But slowly, because the word has gotten out into public consciousness that's being pulled off the table, and even bigger brands are changing with their I just saw something the other day from McDonald's, and they were like I don't know if you saw this. I think they said by 2018, all of their quarter pounder with cheese, you know, the quarter pounder burgers, they're going to only use fresh meat. So I'm like, what were they using before? Hey. What were they using before? Right? Stale meat. But they also said Rotten meat. They also said it's only for the quarter pounders, though. You know. But So the big mac, just watch out. Yeah. I don't know what that is or you know, but I do you you can just everybody can understand this. It is coming from factory formed animals because it's very cheap, you know. So, if you're eating a sick animal, chances are here's the difference. It's not like, oh, this might be something. There's ample research. Anybody can go to doctor Google and look at this. And if you look at the comparison between, factory farmed, beef versus, grass fed beef, and you see that the factory farmed beef has significantly higher ratio of something called omega 6 fatty acids, which these are not it's not that it's bad for you, but you need to have a ample ratio of omega 6 to omega threes. And this omega 3 ratio is so there's such a disparity between these that it's dangerous. Because omega 6 is the more, quote, pro inflammatory fatty acids, and the omega threes are the anti inflammatory fatty acids. And so so just to understand, so it's like salmon, for instance, has a lot of omega threes. Am I correct? Yeah. So fish other kinds of fish? Yeah. Factory farmed salmon is gonna have a lower ratio of omega threes, you know, and higher ratio of omega 6. It's gotta be like wild salmon. Yeah. Wild caught salmon is gonna be better. But, again, you start where you are with what you have. It's better that you're eating salmon than eating, you know, a Twinkie. Right. Right? So we make steps in the direction until we change culture. You know? And, like, it's so crazy being here in New York City and seeing, like, there's, like, a Whole Foods in the mall. Right? It's so crazy that this is even a thing, and it's always packed. Like, more people are waking up to this stuff, but there's still a lot of work to be done. We're still talking about a small percentage of our population that are aware of these kind of things. But moving in that direction, I remember, when I lived in Florissant, we talked about, you know, you visited Florissant, a long time ago. And, somebody came to my door and knocked on the door. And this is you know, I'm the nutritionist and, you know, I'm out there writing books and all this stuff. And he knocked on the door, and he's like, hey, sir. I'm just trying to let you know about this wonderful grain fed beef that we have. And, it marbles perfect, and he's just trying to sell me on this grain fed beef. Not grass fed, grain fed. And I let him do a spiel because I like people, you know, and I don't wanna hurt his feelings, you know. But, you know, of course, I just said no thank you. Then you beat him up. And then and then yeah. Then I, you know, so, anyways, I just said no. Thank you. And, you know, he went on about his business, but I saw he went to the neighbors, and I saw them actually take an order. Right? And it's because of that marketing. Right? That this grain fed beef is the is the best thing, the marbling, all this stuff. But cows should be eating cow food just like humans should be eating human food. Right? And cows eat gra*s. Cows don't eat soy. Right? Cows don't eat cows don't eat other especially animal products, and some of these cow feeds do have animal products in them as well. And so it's just being aware of this stuff and, making a choice because, again, it's not you are what you eat, it's you are what you eat, ate. And we wanna move towards eating animal products from healthier animals. Let's stop and take a quick break. We'll be right back. Payroll and benefits are hard, especially for small businesses that don't have an HR expert. Thankfully, it's a company called Gusto that has your back. Gusto offers the best clear and automated payroll for the modern small business. 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Go to gusto.com/james and get started with 1 month of payroll for free. That's gusto.com/james. Look. It's no secret. The world is still completely changing, and your life is going to change with it. It's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's just that you could no longer rely on conventional institutions like the government, Wall Street companies, corporations, schools, whatever institutions you used to rely on for your income and for your financial security of yourself and your family. Sometimes you can't even rely on your friends or family, so you need you absolutely need to reinvent the way you interact with the world. People ask me all the time, how do I reinvent myself if I'm starting with no money? And I can tell you almost every single time I have ever had to reinvent, I started with nothing. That's why I wanna send you, absolutely free of charge, one of the most important books I've ever written, a book I believe could really help you if you're in a rut, if you're stuck behind the cubicle, if you wanna do your passion or what you love in life, even if you have $0 in your bank account, even if nobody else is giving you an opportunity, this is the book I think could help. It's called Reinvent Yourself, and it's the book I wish I could have read 20 years ago. Even 5 years ago, a book like this would have changed my life, but it didn't exist. So I had to sit down, and I wrote it myself. And, today, I wanna give you a copy. Sure. You can go to Amazon right now and get the paperback for a good price, but I want you to have a limited edition hardcover version on me. All you need to do is go to your computer and type www.jamesfreebooks.com. There, I'll explain everything and give you access to a free hardcover version of my book. Again, the site is www.jamesfreebooks.com. That's www.jamesfreebooks.com. Do it today because I know there's only a limited supply, but do it today while I still have some available. Thanks. It's sort of like, that saying, when you go to the grocery store, stick to the the edges of the grocery store, not the middle aisles. You know, the middle aisles have all the kind of processed carbs and sugars and snacks and potato chips and all that kind of side and the canned foods. The ends have your vegetables and fruits on one side, and maybe the butcher on the other side where it's more the the meat's more fresh. You know, not necessarily organically farmed, but at least fresher. Yeah. That's a good kind of rule of thumb for sure. But another big thing about what makes it so successful, what we do is you could still go into those middle aisles. It's just upgrading the ingredients. Right? Instead of just eating a, you know, whatever Chips Ahoy cookie. Maybe we can use, you know, some gluten free flour. Right? Maybe some almond flour and, you know, grass fed butter to make the cookies. Right? So we because we all we're we're in this culture unless you and I've been through this where you really alienate your community, you know, your family because you're the weird one who's, like, over there eating a salad while everybody else is eating ribs. Yeah. Like, what do you do when you go to your family's house for Thanksgiving and they're all serving, you know, the latest farm factory turkey Yeah. With potatoes and stuffing and all that kind of stuff? The first thing is the very first thing is when it comes to family and that whole shebang is a lot of and I know even people listening, they want their family to change as they're working on changing, whether it's in their, you know, financial health, their relationship context, the physical health. And it could be a big psychological struggle because, you know, you want your mom to stop smoking who's been smoking since, you know, for 40 years or whatever the case might be. But the best thing that we can do is to be an example for them, number 1. Because it's so crazy, you know You can't lecture them. Yeah. That's you've heard you can't be a prophet in your own land. You know, it's just it's kinda silly because they know you. Like, in the case of your parents, they changed their diaper. Right? They saw you crap all over yourself. And so it's like, oh, you're healthy now. You're the health person. There's a disconnect psychologically. You know? But when they can see the example, when they can see your physical health change, when they can see the change in your life as a result, then they become curious. And I always like to direct people to resources rather than me being the person. It's I'm talking about my close family rather than me being the one to tell them. Well and and just to just to explain. So, and this this reels back a little bit because I know I know there's still parts we're gonna we're gonna hit. But you started making this change both in your in your movement, your nutrition, your sleep, and also in your stress state and everything. And you quickly lost £28, like, in a few week period. Your whole life changed. And now, you know, sitting in front of me here, you're a muscular, you know, fit guy. So, obviously, these changes worked for you. It wasn't like magic. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And did did did your spine get fixed? Or or they it did get fixed. The the doctor couldn't believe it. Yeah. You know, it was 6 weeks after making that decision that that pain I've been experiencing every day in my life for two and a half years was totally gone. And I lost £28 as you mentioned. But it wasn't until about 9 months later when I got a scan done to actually look at what happened with my spine. I knew I was better. And you weren't having the pain. Yeah. But also there's a fear there of, like, what if? But then there's this also having a confidence in yourself that you're doing the right thing. And my confidence outweighed it, so I went and got the scan done. It's like, regardless, I'm good, and I'm gonna keep moving forward with my life with what I'm doing. And sure enough, I regenerated some of the bone tissue that I had lost. You know, basically, my my vertebrae were getting smaller. And is that because the food you were eating went just straight into the bone tissue? Like, how does that happen? So the first is starting with how did it how did I lose it? Mhmm. Right? Being, you know, 20 year old kid. But this process started back much earlier. When I was 15, I broke my hip because my bones were so brittle. Right. And the physician at the time never stopped to ask, how did this kid break his hip? Right? It's just like, oh, okay. And they did standard of care. But this was because I this is no joke. So all this stuff we're talking about, if we're talking about, you know, eating sauerkraut if I'm eating sauerkraut, I I when I say I couldn't eat this as a kid, I literally ate fast food, like, almost every day. Alright? And the ramen noodles every day. But I I think maybe, like, every kid. Like, I did too. Like, I ate McDonald's, bagels, and Twinkies every day. You probably had something sneak in there, though. You know, some form of life got past your lips. For me, I I didn't even eat a vegetable except broccoli until I was, you know, 25 years old. Alright? So and broccoli had to have cheese on it as well. And this is, like, real, you know. I'm I'm sorry. Not until I was 25. 25 is when I ate a salad for the first time. Before that, for about two and a half years, I was juicing, getting other stuff in, like smoothies and things like that. But, you know, I just wouldn't do it, man, because my that grandma situation, she just loved me literally almost to death. Right? Just let me eat whatever I wanted because she wanted me to be happy. You know, I was a first grandchild, and I had my own little special table. I could still picture it. My little red chair. And I'd sit there. My grandfather would be eating, some meat that he hunted. You know, they had a garden. And he looks back at me, and he's just like I remember him looking at me like, this kid. I'm eating my fish sticks and my macaroni and cheese and my broccoli with cheese, you know? And so that really set my palate, but I was so deficient in the things that your body needs to regenerate tissue. So the big takeaway here is that your body requires the raw materials that it needs to rebuild you. It's like building a house. If you don't have the raw materials, you have no house. And I was just not getting that stuff in. As soon as I start to give my body those things, your body knows what to do. Even though in the last 10 years, we've learned more about the the human body in the last 200 years. Easy. We still are just scratching the surface. There's an innate intelligence intelligence that your body has that we can't put our finger on. We don't know how the body does what it does. There are only things that we can try to, work in alignment with. You know, there's something like, you know, if you want to, stimulate stem cell activity to a certain area. You know, maybe you can do something like acupuncture, for example. Because and, also, how can we mobilize those stem cells? So that was a big part of my recovery is, like, the cells that create new tissues had to be mobilized. And a lot of that is your in your bone marrow. And so there are foods like spirulina. Right? And so that's like and I've been talking about this for a long time. But spirulina has been, and it's a it's a green algae. It's like a super food quote super food. This food was likely the main protein source for, major civilizations like the Aztecs. Right? They would dry it out, in in, you know, countries like Chad as well and use it because it's 71% protein by weight. By far, the highest protein food in the world. Mhmm. But also it has, things like beta carotene. It's a rich source of magnesium, which we talked about earlier in conjunction with regenerating tissue. But also there's a study recently that I, I cited on my show that found that this literally, activates something called stem cell genesis. So literally the creation of new stem cells by consuming this food. It's fascinating stuff. But sometimes we can go our entire lives and not know that there's something like that and just eat SpaghettiOs. You know what I'm saying? So, that's what I really got myself onto. It's like, what is the best source of this? What is the best source of that? And I start to flood my tissues with those things. And, but all of that didn't show I had the movement part. I had the nutrition part, but it really all clicked when I started to sleep again. And sleeps would you say, by far, sleep is the most important thing? I'm a clinical nutritionist. I mean, I know they all work together, but, like, clearly, you die if you don't sleep, and you're tired if you don't sleep. Like, sleep's clearly related to all of the energy we have during the day. It's completely dependent on how on the quality of our sleep the night before. Yeah. I'm a clinical nutritionist, and so I've been promoting for years years, like, food is food matters. Food is most important. It's it's just not true. It's just not true. Your sleep is more important than your food and your exercise combined. And I've got proof in that even in just how your body is shaped. There was a study that was done by Chicago, I'm sorry, the University of Chicago. And they took people, and they put them on a calorie restricted diet. Something that I was taught to do in my traditional university setting if you wanna help people lose weight, which is not actually what you should do. But what happened was they put them on this calorie restricted diet, and they monitored their fat loss. This is important. I said fat loss. Okay? Not weight loss. So we're gonna come back to that. The first you know, in this phase of the study, they actually allowed them also to get 8 and a half hours of sleep per night. K? Another phase of the study, same individuals, they had them on the same exact diet, but now they sleep deprive them. So now they take away 3 hours of sleep, and they're getting 5 and a half. At the end of the study, they lost 55% more body fat when they were well rested. Nothing else changed in their life. No more exercise, no more dieting, just changing their sleep. They lost 55% more body fat. You can't get that from exercising every day, like, doing CrossFit and beating the crap out of yourself. It's very, very difficult. Like, this is where you have to, like, live in the gym and keep on working out, staying super active to get that level of body fat change. And this is from doing nothing. And so what's do they understand the mechanism of that? Like, I I buy into that. Like, I for me, very important is my 8 hours. Like, I do not function if I don't get 8 hours. And, I that's that's my number one rule Yeah. Of everything. So so but I don't understand the mechanisms behind that at all. That's a great question. And this is really where my work is. It's like, I can tell you this thing. Some people just need to know that. Oh, okay. I can lose more body fat by sleeping. But some people need to know why. Like, what's going on behind the scenes? How does this actually work? And so the biggest tool here when we're talking about weight loss, the number one word involved is not calories. The number one word involved is hormones. Your hormones determine everything about you. And what are hormones? Hormones are basically these little chemical messengers that send messages between all the cells in your body. Right? So this makes sure that all the cells are on the same page. If those messages get screwed up, you can get screwed up. And so sleep is, like, the governator of certain hormones. It's like the major boss that's influencing a lot of this stuff. Number 1, we can start with human growth hormone. Alright. You get the largest secretion of HGH, also known as this quote youth hormone when you're sleeping. This is muscle sparing, so it supports your lean muscle. This contributes a lot to a mitochondrial function, so your energy and your recovery significantly. Because here's the thing about exercise, you don't you're in worse shape after you workout. We don't really get that. You know, you go and do a good workout. We feel like, oh, I'm more fit now. You actually are in worse shape than when you walked in the gym because you've broken your body down. You've broken your tissues down. And if I was and I've done this before. If I was to take you and let's go, you know, do a workout and then we go get some blood work done, your cortisol is gonna be high, blood sugar is gonna be dysregulated. We can probably get you diagnosed with something. Alright? And all you did was just do a good workout. The workout is known as something it's called a hormetic stressor. So that means it can be beneficial if you're allowed to recover from it. And so that change really happens during sleep, and human growth hormone has a huge impact on this. And so that's number 1. Number 2 is melatonin itself. And obviously, I know you've heard heard about melatonin. This is glorified sleep hormone, but it's a lot more than that. I wanna talk about something else in relationship, but sticking on fat loss here, there was a study done. This was in the journal Pineal Research. And they found that melatonin increases something called brown adipose tissue. Alright. So this or bat fat. Alright. So it's brown adipose tissue or bat. And what's so crazy is brown adipose tissue burns white adipose tissue. So brown adipose tissue is it functions like muscle, in that it burns the white adipose tissue which is kinda the gooey stuff that people are trying to get rid of. Alright? And why is it brown? That's the question. It's brown because it has more mitochondria. And so just to be clear on what that is, so mitochondria is little they're like I always think about Homer Simpson in the in the nuclear power plant. Like, how do you have that job? But it's like this nuclear power plant where your body's energy is getting produced. Right? So your mitochondria produce something called ATP, which is your body's energy currency. Right? It's adenosine triphosphate, so ATP. So it creates tissues that have a lot more of this mitochondria in them. Melatonin does that. The crazy thing is you only secrete melatonin adequately when you have a normal day and and and dark and light cycle. So you need to be in darkness to produce enough melatonin. Getting more melatonin helps to burn a lot more fat. I'll share 2 more really quickly. Another big piece here is, cortisol, and this is on the negative side. So cortisol so one of the biggest things that our sleep does is it helps to buffer and reset cortisol. The longer that we're awake, the more sleep deprived we are, the more elevated our cortisol levels become, generally. And cortisol has this really interesting ability, and there's another bottom line for people to walk away with today is that muscle is your body's fat burning machinery. K? So muscle is your body's fat burning machinery. This is how your metabolism what's really kind of running your metabolism. Like, when we talk about a basal metabolic rate, like how much fat you're burning or calories you're burning just sitting here doing nothing. The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn just sitting at rest. Cortisol has this interesting ability to do something. It's a process called gluconeogenesis. So that means sugar creation, basically. And it can break down your muscle tissue and turn it into glucose. Your valuable muscle tissue gets turned into sugar, which is then turns on insulin, which makes your body store that as fat, eventually. So, essentially, stress or cortisol, which is like the stress hormone Yeah. Turns muscle into sugar. It can. Yes. Diabetes. It can. Yes. So there's a huge stress component. And by the way, people can go again, go to doctor Google and look this up, anything that I say. But today, approximately 90 percent of physician visits are for stress related illnesses. Compare that to, like, the 1900 when, like, 96% were for, like, acute infection, childbirth, accidents, and things of that nature. You know? Today, it's shifted so much. And we live in a very abnormal world, you know? Like, our conditions are very different. You know, walking around here in New York City, it's an amazing city, but this is kinda weird, you know, from what our genes would expect us to be doing. And so it's just understanding that and basically how can we simulate what life would be like. That's really what the gym is. You're simulating hunting and gathering, like building something. Right? You're picking up heavy stuff and putting it down again. Right? That's something your genes expect you to do, and it activates certain these it's a epigenetic trigger to basically express a better version of you. You know, it's kinda like the printouts that you're getting, right, from these different activities. And so this component with Cortisol, there was also if you look at what's going on with something called leptin. Because it's not just the fact that, these hormones are changing what your body is doing, like physically burning fat or turning down your metabolism, but also how hard is it to lose weight when you're hungry all the time? I truly don't believe and, like, these things don't even make sense. It's like an oxymoron again. It's like suffering equals health. How? Like, the that doesn't even go together. Right? I I don't believe that suffering equals health. So if somebody's trying to lose weight by dieting and restricting themselves so heavily that, you know, it becomes a very it can become the infatuation. I know this from when I try to lose weight when I was so heavy drinking SlimFast Shakes. Right? It's like a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner. And I went into the marketing, and it was first of all, it was disgusting. It was like Pepto Bismol, with a little bit of fast? Yeah. No. It just tasted like it. It was pink too because I got the strawberry kind. Yeah. And then, you know, the sensible dinner. But then I'd just be going ham. I just crushed, like, 2 bowls of cereal, you know, late at night just because I was so hungry. But how do you know when something's suffering as opposed to, you know, something where you need habit reformation? Let's say exercise is suffering for me. Mhmm. Right? But it could be also the case I need to get in the habit of exercising more. Yes. That's great. That's great. Really, really good. So any kind of habit change is going to create some discomfort. Right. However, it's whether or not it's chronic. Right? And so people are chronically hungry. Right? When it comes to especially changing your nutrition and, like, the health equaling suffering, which I don't believe in, pleasure and sit feeling satiated is going to get you a lot further. And we can get you there a lot faster when you're not depriving yourself. Right? So I get what you're saying. When it comes to nutrition, if we take away too much from your body, the body's processes start to shut down. So it's a little bit more glorified process than a simple habit change. So I hope that makes sense. But, with that said, what I would turn people to and let me actually finish this. So leptin, that's your body's major satiety hormone. Alright? Stanford University researchers uncovered that, sleep deprivation dramatically suppresses leptin. Right? So that's your body's satiety hormone making making you feel like I'm good. But also, it elevates ghrelin, which is this is your hunger, like, again, glorified hunger hormone. So so, basically, if you don't get enough sleep, like, let's say, you sleep 5 hour, like, the indicate in the study that you mentioned. If you don't if you only sleep 5 hours a night, you're gonna feel more cravings throughout the day. Absolutely. And people know that. Like, you know that experientially. You're gonna find yourself going for the carby, you know. Like, I was shocked just walking down the street, and you see these carts with the croissants and the donuts and just like it was like and and I just and the people are right there in the line. I was like, you wanna do that? Are you sure you wanna do that? Particularly, there's studies too on those carts. I don't necessarily wanna say anything bad about them. So I'm just saying I I read this. It might not be true. But at night, they store all those carts in one place, and there's just rats running all over them all night. Oh my god. And then they put the food on them and so on. Oh, the pollution as well. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I mean, yeah. I mean, you know, it's a it's a thing. It's a thing that's available for us, but, you know, we're not gonna create any conspiracy theories. And so leptin is gonna get suppressed. Ghrelin is gonna be elevated. So you're getting into this situation where if you're trying to lose weight but you're sleep deprived, you're setting yourself up for failure. Right? Whereas, if we do basic principles of what your genes expect, you can literally set yourself up for success. And I've seen this I've seen people lose over a £100. I've seen like, I just got this amazing message from a young lady, yesterday, and just, like I actually met her in New York City. I was doing a book signing. And she's so just a beautiful girl, and but she was really struggling with her weight. You know? She was just like, this has been something I have not been able to master. She had every reason under the sun, you know, trouble with, you know, her mom's health, school. It's a lot of stress. Yeah. She's just trying to she's trying to create a good life for herself and also take care of her family. You know? And it's just like, where is the time for me? And so I love your book so much. You know, choose yourself. And so I just pointed her back to your mom wants the best version of you. Right? Your mom doesn't want the shadow of her daughter. Your your significant other, your your schoolwork requires a better version of you, and you're gonna show up as a better person if you take care of yourself first. Like, you really need to make that the hallmark that everything else springs off of. That part of the habit change can be difficult because we're so psychologically putting ourselves in this crazy state of, like, if I'm not hustling, if I'm not grinding, then I'm losing. It's so true. Like, sleep, more important than you know, everybody wants to be a quote, unquote success. No one can ever define it. Everyone wants to, like, hustle. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. But the reality is you need to set aside, you know, and you talk about this in your book, 90 minutes before you sleep, no screen time, you know, really focus on trying to sleep with the the sunset and the sunrise, you know, so you're in line with those cycles. It's the most important thing. You have to live a long, high quality of life. So if you were to give the top 5 to 10 tips because because there's been a lot of knowledge here, and I I encourage people to read your book, Sleep Smarter. I encourage people to listen to the the Model Health podcast that you do. A lot of this is covered. You cover really well with all the amazing people you you talk with and in your book. But there's a lot of information to absorb. And I I often feel that there's so much. There's no way I could remember every little thing. It's like learning how to swing a golf club. There's just too many things to remember to do it right as opposed to just swinging a golf club. So what's the, like, top five things I can start doing today to to radically, at least begin the process? Okay. Yeah. And thank you. You know, that's the thing about the show is, like, I dedicate it to one subject matter. Like, we've been amazing. You go so deep, and it's so knowledgeable. I mean, to improve your health, you gotta listen to the Model Health podcast because there is so much information in there. And so so but now for for my listeners who who hopefully, they'll start listening to it, but they haven't yet. And they're they're sitting in their cubicle. They're maybe stressed out of their minds. They don't like their job. They're they're feeling a little overweight. They're aging. Yeah. What should they start doing? Awesome. Awesome. I'm gonna knock out I can give 5 quick tips here. I wanna preface this with something really important because you mentioned the just being able to live a good life. And so it's just like so and a lot of people listen to this show. I'm sure they're, you know, an entrepreneur or, you know, they're working on something, you know, as far as their career is concerned. So one of the big things and I don't know. Do you know doctor Daniel Amen by chance? No. So he's like the brain doctor. Like, he does he has the largest database of actual, brain imaging scans. He's calling the spec scans. The NFL studies use his scans as well. Right? And just talking with him and really understanding that during sleep is when your brain actually detoxifies itself. So, what is what is that? Why does it even matter? Well, your brain is so interesting because you have this blood brain barrier. Right? We talked about the lymphatic system earlier, but the lymphatic system doesn't work exactly with your brain. So your brain can't detoxify itself with that channel. It has something called the glymphatic system. Alright? This is kinda shout out to the glial cells in your brain. And so what Alzheimer's has been found to be in recent studies is the inability of the brain to detoxify itself. Alzheimer's is not something that we wanna be dealing with when we're trying to build a business, when we're trying to you know, even our early onset, which we're seeing people in their forties and thirties having symptoms and and having early signs of Alzheimer's. I think I have early onset Alzheimer's, to be honest. So why do you say that? Kidding. I can never remember people's names anymore. Oh my goodness. You know Jim Kwik. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I just use his stuff. Alright. That's all. You know? He's on the podcast. I'll have him on again. So, like He'll help me out. Quick thing to remember names. You know, James, if I didn't know you, I met you in a bunch of people. Oh, the memory palace. He he talks about the memory palace. I don't even know that one. Yeah. Yeah. That's a you kind of picture, when you're meeting a bunch of people, you sort of you picture this palace, and each person's in a room with different objects. And so when you when you meet them again, you remember the objects. So he did location method with it. So I just do, like, I usually make something funny, you know. So I if James, like James Dean, will come to mind. So I picture you with the jacket in the car. Hey. I'm James Dean. That's that's a good one. You know, and I'll never forget. And so, but so that's a big thing. And with the, detoxification, your brain is this glymphatic system is 10 times more active when you're asleep than when you're awake. And, also, when you're sleeping, your brain cells shrink about 60% to make more channels and more room for detoxification because it's that important. And lastly, there was a study that was done, that I cited in sleep smarter finding that if we look at education, right, people who note themselves to be poor sleepers had overall a full one point grape, GPA lower than people who are better sleepers. So 3.5 compared to 2.5. Alright? And that's staggering. And then you take that out to the workplace as well. You know? And on and on and on. Last one is there was a study that was published in The Lancet that was done on physicians, and they had them to complete a task. Then they sleep deprive them, and they had them to do the same exact thing. This time, they made 20% more mistakes, and it took them 14% longer to do the same exact thing. And so how often are we sacrificing our work quality and having to go back and clean up our mess because we're sleep deprived? Because what today, what's happening is we're mistaking doing work for being effective. And that's what we really wanna master is being effective so we could do our work and then live our life. Right? So five, things here. So number 1, and low hanging fruit. This is super simple. And this is from Appalachian State University who did this study, and they found that morning exercisers sleep better at night. Mhmm. So they had exercisers, 2 dip 3 different phases. So one phase worked out exclusively at 7 AM in the morning, another phase exclusively at 1 PM, another phase exclusively at 7 PM. And at the end of the study, they found that the morning exercisers spend more time in the deepest, most anabolic stages of sleep. That's where you produce the most HGH. What's a workout? This they had them doing cardio quote cardio Mhmm. Workout. Alright. So that can be on the treadmill, you know. But I I would recommend and we can come back as one of the tips to add in some resistance training. But so that's what they had them to do. And, so they had, spent more time in the most anabolic stages of sleep. Their sleep cycles were more efficient because that's the name of the book. It's sleep smarter, not sleep more. Alright? Because it's really about efficiency of your sleep cycles and your brain being able to change, change phases adequately and all the hormonal changes that happen as a result. And they also had a 25% greater drop in blood pressure at night. So the people who work on the morning, their blood pressure drops more at night. It's kinda counterintuitive. But what that equates to is an activation of something called the parasympathetic nervous system or your, quote, rest and digest system. Alright? That gets turned on more efficiently if you exercise in the morning. So for those who exercise in the afternoon after work, this is not like, oh, no. I've been doing it wrong. It's not about that. All you need to do is add in just 5 minutes of exercise in the morning because that elicits these programs. It's called a cortisol reset, is what I call it. And so for many people, their cortisol is not high enough in the morning, and it's, too high at night. So this helps to get that normal cortisol secretion, elevated. Because your cortisol if you look at evolutionary biology, our cortisol should naturally be at a peak between 6 AM and 8 AM and gradually decline through the day and bottom out at night. A big reason why people have sleep difficulties is hormone related because their cortisol is too high at night. And some for some people, it's because they're exercising too late. And so do 5 minutes of exercise. I did it I did a test for an entire year where I worked out in the afternoon, like 4, 5 o'clock, and I get done sometimes at 6. But I did 4, 5 minutes of exercise in the morning, and it didn't affect because a lot of people exercise also care about the results. My testosterone still went up, my strength numbers, my reaction time, everything still improved. So this didn't bother my workout later for people that might be concerned about that. So what does that look like? This could be 4 minute Tabata. Do you know what Tabata is? Mm-mm. This is a Japanese scientist. And, so basically, it's 4 minutes of exercise. It's 20 minutes of exercise, 10 seconds rest, back to back until 4 minutes is up. And it is hard. It is not easy. For 4 minutes? For 4 that's it. We could do a Tabata workout today, and, yeah, it's it can make you cry. So maybe this could be spelled so I can look it up? T a b a t a. Okay. And so this could be maybe, you're just doing bodyweight squats. Right? So you do squats for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, then you do push ups for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, and just alternate those. Great workout. And you'll get those benefits for sleep and also some significant changes with your body fat as well. So as tip number 1 is get some exercise in the morning first thing no matter what. Alright? It's just it's not it doesn't require a lot. Maybe you could jump on the rebounder, go for a quick walk around the block. Just do something to wake your body up and reset your cortisol. Tip number 2, should I stay on the sleep track or this can be general? No. No. General. Just five tips for better living. Okay. Alright. Definitely then. I'll just piggyback off the first one, which is to make sure that you do implement some resistance training. I've worked over the years with a lot of endurance athletes who seen massive benefit because it helps to buffer a lot of the overuse, quote, overuse injuries. Right? And the reason that this matters, number 1, is what I talked about earlier is that muscle is your body's fat burning machinery. Number 2, muscle is also a reservoir. It's like a holding take for antiaging related hormones. Right? So it's kinda like and if you look at, you know, some of the research, you see that people who tend to have, more muscle on their frame as they age tend to recover better from injuries. And they also don't take such a a hit because it's such a stressful event that your body has to heal because they've got this reserve of antiaging hormones, and, it just helps with the recovery significantly. So especially as you age because you lose a certain percentage of muscle each year as you age. And so each decade, you know, it could be up maybe even around 5% from going from, 30 to 40. Right? So unless you stay do something about it. You know? So stay on top of that. And what does that look like? I recommend 2 times a week. Right? 2 to 4, but 2 would be a minimum, where you do some compound movements. And these, again, these are things your body expect you to do. You need to be able to pull things, push things, squat yourself up and down your gait, you know, so maybe lunge. And so I would do make sure that we're doing some squats. I love the dead lift for people as well. That's resistance training is the dead lift? Yes. So that's just taking a big weight and lifting it. Off the floor. That's it. And, again, your genes expect you to be able to pick heavy stuff off the floor. And this is coming from a guy who had this so called incurable spinal disease, who could deadlift £400 now. You know? Where I start but I started with the bar. Alright? If you're, like, barely walking right now, I'm not recommending you go in heavy dead lift. Just do what you can. Right? Just work your way up. And I really feel that dead lift the dead lifting is like some kind of a insurance policy for my spinal integrity. Like, it really did help to sort things out and really made me feel strong. Like, my frame, the muscles around my spine are so strong, and I just feel really good in my body. And this was something also for people who are feeling that maybe they're a little bit of a victim, maybe they're, in a place where they don't feel like they they have much influence or power in the world. I would take these clients or, you know, the patients that were referred to me, and I would have them to strength train. Sometimes I would actually go into the gym with them, and it's amazing what happens. Not the physical transformation, but the mental transformation. You know, when they actually feel strong, when they feel like they can move through the world with force and that they have a power, you know, like it's symbolic. And this is something, again, our genes expect us to do. This was imbued into our cultures whether whatever culture you're from. My wife's really into this show called Vikings. I don't know if anybody watches this. But she was like, the women are warriors too. I was like, yeah. You you are. You know, you have that same genetic potential, but we need to tap into it. Last little side note there is, you know, a lot of women still, and I talk about this every opportunity I can. If I'm doing, you know, keynote or whatever the case might be, are worried about getting swole. Right? They're gonna get too muscular if they work out and lift weights. And it's just simply it's just not true. Most guys can't get big, and they're trying hard, like, taking weight gain or 5,000 shakes like Cartman on South Park. Like, he's they're we are trying to get big, but it's very difficult to push past your body set point. And so how do how do some women get like that? Most of the time, if you see a really, really muscular thick woman who's, you know, has more, quote, man manly type size and shape, then she is probably 99.999% taking some kind of anabolic substance. Now also coupled with that, for the guys who are able to put on a lot of sides, like, we gotta eat like it's a full time job. Like, we gotta be on the clock. We gotta have that meals prepped. We gotta do a lot, plus the supplements, plus the lifting. And we're doing a different kind of lifting as well. You're doing more of that what we're taught to do if you want to be fit, which is not lifting heavy weights, but doing a lot of times. That can actually make you bigger. Alright? So but it's coupled with the food because here's the big takeaway is that lifting weights doesn't make you bigger. Food makes you bigger. Alright? You can't grow unless you have the nutrients to do it. Just like goes back to with my spine. So don't be afraid of lifting weights. Like, let that go, like, forever. If you see some of the women, even, you know, people check out my Instagram and, you know, I show my wife and I working out all the time. She's just beautifully shaped woman. She lifts, like, a lot of heavy weights. And she like, I gotta get her to calm down sometimes. You know? Like, she's really into it because she likes the way it makes her feel, and, also, she likes the results that happens with her body as well. So, I just wanted to give that sidebar as well. 3rd tip. Okay. Water. I'm You you drank half of that, since we started. I haven't drunk any. So I drunk half a liter. So I'm gonna give people a weight loss tip first. Well, this is something that I actually haven't done. So there's something called water induced thermogenesis. K? Water induced thermogenesis. And there's a really fascinating study recently, and I talked about this on on my show, that found that drinking water elevates your metabolism. Alright? So people talk about drinking water for weight loss. It really does work to change not just what's going on, like, making you feel full or whatever, that kind of stuff. But it fundamentally changes what's happening with your metabolism. So this water is probably, you know, right around room, quote, room temperature, which is, you know, maybe around 72 degrees. So when I drink this water, it has to heat the water to 98.6 degrees. That creates this thermogenic effect that burns about 30 to 40 calories, alright, just from drinking this water. So should I drink colder water? Because then it's harder to heat. That's a great question. So the science is sketchy on that because a colder water could do a reverse effect where it kind of, in in essence, kind of freezes the system up a little bit. So but that the science isn't really solid there. I would just stick with the research and what that says, which is not drinking water too cold, unless, you know, that's your thing. It's okay. But, that's number 1 is the thermogenic effect. And, also, here's a strategy for it. I do something called an inner bath every single day. So the first thing I do when I wake up, and I've been doing this for over a decade as well. Everything's over 10 years. So probably closer actually, maybe 15 years I've been doing this practice. When you wake up in the morning, that's when you're most dehydrated. Okay? So that's your body has done all of these amazing process. We talked about the glymphatic system working, your circulatory system, muscles getting repaired, and there's a lot of waste accumulated kind of, these metabolic waste products. And they're just sitting there in your tissues, and they need to get flushed out. But if you get up and then you go have coffee and a bowl of cereal and you go to work, you're still just carrying this stuff around. And we also know too, if we wanna give ourselves a mental picture, when you go pee in the morning, that's when your urine is usually the most kinda concentrated. Right? It looks like like, maybe like you're drinking. Right? It just is like, woah. It's super whatever. You know? But when you have water, like, the more water you drink, you know, your urine becomes more and more clear. And so that's just an example when you wake up in the morning, your body giving you a sign that you're dehydrated. There's a lot of, metabolic waste there in your urine. So what I do is I drink about a a liter of water first thing in the morning, and I call this my inner bath. And so this is high quality water like we've talked about a little bit, and so this is spring water bottle and gla*s. You can use if you're gonna get a home system. I really like reverse osmosis versus, like, these like a Brita or something like that, which I used to use. But if you look at the back of the Brita Brita package, it says made by Clorox. Alright? So it's made by bleach company, and it says removes the smell and taste of chlorine, but it doesn't remove the chlorine. You don't wanna consume a lot of chlorine, especially on a daily basis, especially drinking a liter of it. Alright? So reverse osmosis kinda gives the water a clean slate. But that's a little bit of a problem too because water is again, it's, the universal solvent. So if the water doesn't have nutrients and structure, it doesn't have structure, these things in your cells called aquaporins, they're not going to really, communicate with that water adequately, if that makes sense. So it's really important to get the right water. That's the part I'm worried about. It's hard to get the right water then. Yeah. It's simple. You know, if you get a reverse osmosis system at your house, and all you need to do to restructure the water is add a little sea salt to the water, or there's, like, little mineral drops and things like that. Because water is it's sort of like as we're looking at this, it just looks like some kind of liquid, like this clear liquid. And you I don't know if you do you remember the Bruce Lee thing? It's like the water, my friend. I I don't remember that. But Because it can flow you're saying that. It can flow, but then it can become solid, and it can hurt you. Right? But water really is, it's a liquid crystal. So even though it looks like this liquid substance, if we look at it under microscope, when you freeze it, right, it starts to look like these little crystals or snowflakes or these little so it's a liquid crystal that stores data. It stores information. So that's why water is known as this universal solvent because it'll because it literally that's why they're able to find statins in your water is it stores data. Alright? So that said, reverse osmosis gives it a clean slate, add some, you know, sea salt to it, and you're you're good to go. Spring water, bottle at the source. That's pretty much my recommendations as far as water goes. Well water, that's another option as well. I actually live on a well. So and I had no idea when we found this house, which I'll tell you a story about it later. But when we found this house, it was just bonus. Like, I had no idea. It was like the perfect place, and then, oh, there's a well too. You know? But that's that, you know I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to dig a well in the Airbnb I'm staying at. So drink water. The recommendation is half of your body weight in ounces every day. So if you're a £150 person, that means 75 ounces in water every day. Alright. That's the that's the minimum. That's the floor. If you're more active, you know, if you're out in the sun, if you're exercising, then you need to build up from there. But that's the minimum for you to be as as healthy and sovereign as you can possibly be. Tip 4 tip 4, I think I'll take it back to sleep. And I would say that and this is huge for all of us today. You know, we have our devices, you know, and this is the I've been impressing this on culture for about half a decade now. And as you know, like, the Apple do you have iPhone too as well? I have an Android. No disrespect. No disrespect. Right here on the iPhone, you swipe up, and there's a tool called night shift. Alright? And this night shift tool, it pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light from your screen. You see it right there? Yeah. And so Harvard researchers have confirmed that blue light, specifically from our devices, suppresses melatonin and elevates cortisol. Alright? Those two things that screw up our sleep. The problem is that you can and people, we have no idea that this is happening because you can physiologically be unconscious and go to sleep, but your melatonin can be suppressed for and what they said was basically, and this is I'm just giving a summation, every hour you're on your device at night, suppresses melatonin for 30 minutes. Alright. So just say you're 2 hours right before you go to bed, melatonin suppressed for an hour. You're basically gonna lose an hour of actual sleep. And this could be monitored with, you know, What about this? I don't I don't use my phone at night. Yeah. I just use my Kindle. Uh-huh. So and this is like kind of, The grayscale. Yeah. And it also doesn't, it doesn't emit photons. It had use this e ink technology. Yeah. So supposedly a little better for sleep. Definitely. That's better. It's it's moving us in that direction, you know. And I full I love my iPhone. Love my iPhone. You know, I love all my devices. They enable us to do this stuff, you know. But it's having the relationship, you know, and understanding that this is something we weren't able to do even, you know, 10 years ago. Right. Right? And take it back with television, you know, it's only been a few decades for that as well. And so our bodies require, very specific light and dark cycle to stay in tune and just to stay healthy. It's called your biological rhythms. And so today, we can manufacture basically, we can have a light cycle, and then when it gets dark outside, we can create another light cycle in our house. You know, turn all the lights on, watch the big screen TV, and we're just bathing ourselves in this information that tells our body and our brains that it's still daytime, and they're producing daytime hormones, namely cortisol. So the big tip here is to give yourself a screen curfew. This is this is probably the hardest thing. This was I saved it for number 4, but I think this is gonna make the most impact. I, by the way, totally agree with this. I've written about this before as well. Like, 2 hours before bedtime, no screen time, except for me, my Kindle. See, I'm nicer than you because I'll just say even 30 minutes as the on ramp. But 2 hours on ramp. 2 hours would be phenomenal. But as the on ramp, just at least give yourself 30 minutes. The problem, though, is that what do people do in that time period? Read. What if they don't wanna read? Well, you know, fool around with your significant other. Go. Yes. So, hopefully, that's more interesting than Instagram. But, you know, some people, I don't know. Maybe you're doing it wrong. But so that and plus all the benefits that that has with sleep quality, and I wrote a whole chapter on that. You know, sex isn't sec the influence of sex on sleep and the influence of sleep on sex. So and you can actually talk to someone, talk to your significant other, talk to your kids. That I don't do. You know? And it just depends on you, you know, and how you get refreshed. I definitely get refreshed being by myself for the most part, unless it's with my family. Mhmm. And then outside of that, listen to a podcast. You could listen to a podcast. You could listen to the James Altster show on your phone because you don't have to stare into the screen to do that, audiobook. But you just have to find something to fill it with some value because, as you know, like changing habits, if I take your Instagram and Facebook away from you for 30 minutes at night and that's what you've been come become accustomed to, and I replace it with, you know, sit here and just meditate, and that's not your cup of tea, you're gonna get the Internet jitters. And you're gonna flip out and you're just gonna be like, just let me read one post. Just just one picture. And you're gonna rebel. Like, your whole physiology, you have to replace it with something of greater or equal value. That's the key. Outside of that, really quick is, employ some hacks. So there's blue light blocking devices like on your phone. At least make sure you're using that. For your desktops and laptops, it's flux, f dot l u x. I've been using that for probably 5 years, 4 or 5 years. Does the same thing. So it replaces that kind of strong white and blue light spectrum with more of a warmer colors. And finally, for Android, wherever your Android is, there's a app called Twilight. People could check out. So there's some little hacks. Or if you wanna be really swanky, you can get these blue light blocking glasses and wear those. And I do. I have been wearing some for a couple of years now, and I've experimented with them. They're basically orange tinted on the orangish reddish scale, even some yellow ones. Yeah. Yeah. Dave Asprey sells those on his Bulletproof site. You know, there's cool looking ones too. You know, they look kinda cool, and there's something that makes it look like you just built a birdhouse or something. So just you know, that's another option. You don't have to do any of these things. But each of these pieces you add in, the easiest things are the ones you don't have to change your life. So set the night shift on your phone, set it on your computer, set it and forget it, and just get the benefits that way. Final tip. Do you have any recommendations for the final tip? Go for it. Okay. Well, I'll stick on this on the sleep track. I think one of the biggest issues outside of our devices messing up our sleep is, something I refer to as inner chatter. Right? So a lot of people would go to sleep, and there's this great quote that says, my bed is this wonderful place that I go to remember all the things I was supposed to do. And so we go to bed with the intention of going to sleep, but then it kicks on, you know, the inner chatter. And I think that it's actually really a gift. I just did a talk in the Philippines, this, event called tropical think tank. And I did a keynote there, and one of the other speakers was, Peter Schenkman. I know Peter. Yeah. So he's like the ADHD, power ranger. Right? And so he really uses it. He sees it as a gift. And before I even met him, that's how I saw it to a to a large extent. It's being and especially in today's world where you have to process a lot of information. It's kinda like, if if you're gonna help me, you need to have, like, 20 tabs open on your mental computer. Right? But the the issue is how do you minimize all the tabs at night and just keep the sleep tab open? And what I found to be the most effective thing is, I call it brain training or, a lot of people call it meditation, You know, and I call it meditation as well. But, and also, what does the science say? So there was a study that was published and and completed by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, finding that meditating in the morning does in fact help you to sleep better at night. To the degree, we're talking about people with chronic sleep issues, AKA insomniacs, being free of symptoms simply by employing a meditation practice. And so How many minutes? Average. The one let's see. What's that study, I believe it was a 30 minute practice or it was 20 or 30 minutes in this practice. And again, you don't even have to go that far. You know, it could be 10 minutes. Just depends on the meditation you do. And this was a mindfulness meditation. So he why does it work? And so, also, they found that it improves, sleep onset, you know, so you fall asleep faster, overall sleep quality, wake after sleep onset, so you you don't wake up as often or at all. And also improve symptoms of depression, which that's tied to sleep deprivation as well. All of that for meditating. And so why does this work? Well, meditation does something. It activates that parasympathetic nervous system we talked about earlier. And so that's that system that is the opposite. It turns off the fight or flight sympathetic nervous system. And so we can self turn that on, and it's that's a part of your autonomic nervous system, just to wrap this up. So your autonomic nervous system controls your heart. It controls your digestion, but also controls your breathing. And the crazy thing is we can jump in and take control of our breathing, but not you don't want the responsibility of beating your heart or trying to digest your food. But why is it that we can change our breathing when it's on automatic? But everybody's thinking about their breathing now since I brought it up, of course. And it's because we can be wrong. That's why we can change our breathing. We can be wrong. We can unknowingly elicit a stress response for something that is not a problem. So case in point, through our evolution, our ancestors might have been walking through the woods, and they get scared. And they think it's a snake, but it's really a stick. And you get this heightened state of awareness, and you can't really calm back down unless you know how to, unless you can change your breathing. You could jump back in and reduce all of that stress response simply from changing your breathing. And so today, we have this heightened state of stress from maybe it's a phone bill, maybe it's, you know, a bad news from your significant other, maybe it's whatever, but it creates that same response. But we don't pay attention to that. We can actually change how it's affecting our body simply from breathing. And so that'll be the 3rd I'm sorry. The 5th point. The 5th tip is to employ a meditation practice daily. And I again, I'm minimalist here with Well, I like it. In your book, you mentioned you do 5 minute, sessions, which which I think is, reasonable. So many people think they have to do 60 minutes, but it's like it's like what you were saying about exercise. It's only 4% of the day, 60 60 minutes. So, you know, 5 minutes here and there is is is good enough to kind of remind you of of that it exists. So that's 5 tips. But there's a 1,000,000,000 tips if you listen to the Model Health podcast by Sean Stephenson or read the book, Sleep Smarter, which I highly recommend. It tells your story from beginning to end, how you were diagnosed with this disease, all these problems you have, and how you kind of came out of it, which was a it's a real, real story. It's like, I like those the best when you you your yourself is the is the experiment as opposed to, like, all these studies, which is very kind of confirming. But you actually saw the results on yourself by just applying these techniques, and then the doctors saw it too, and they couldn't even believe. Yeah. So thanks once again for coming on the show. I'm a I'm a big fan of your show. Is it is it the number one health show on on Itunes? Yeah. Today, it is. Yes. In the in the US. That's great. Congratulations. It's such a great show, and thanks once again for coming on the James Altiger Show. Thank you for having me, James. I appreciate it. For more from James, check out the James Alticere Show on the choose yourself network at jamesalticere.com, and get yourself on the free insiders list today. Hey. Thanks for listening. Listen. I have a big favor to ask you, and and it will only take 30 seconds or less, and it would mean a huge amount to me. If you like this podcast, please let me know. Please let the team I work with know. Please let my guests know, and you can do this easily by subscribing to the podcast. It's probably the biggest favor you could do for me right now, and it's really simple. Just go to Itunes, search for the James Altucher Show, and click subscribe. Again, it will only take you 30 seconds or less. And if you subscribe now, it will really help me out a lot. Thanks again.