And so you decided, as a neuroscientist, to look into walking. And what I want to know is what's been your most shocking discovery about walking?

I think it's the last chapter of the book. We underestimate the extent to which walking is a profoundly social activity. We think of walking as just a simple means from getting from A to B, and we underestimate dramatically how exquisitely attuned we are to each other when we walk. And we underestimate terribly how enjoyable walking together is. And if you think about it, humans made our journey out of Africa sort of 80 to 130,000 years ago, and we did it on foot. We didn't do it using mechanized transport because we hadn't invented it. That's only something we really invented in the last 50 or 100 years or whatever. So it's something we have to do together. We did it in groups, we did it in families, we did it in tribes, we did it in communities. And to do that successfully means that everybody has to be paying attention to everybody else. People have to keep an eye out for danger. If you're walking at the edge of the group and you see a sudden movement in a bush, you're going to have to quickly tell everybody that there's a tiger over there.

Or either that, Shane, or I'm going to shove you in the direction of the tiger and run.

Exactly. Because to survive a tiger, all you have to do is run a little bit faster than the slowest person, as the old joke goes.

It's true. And nobody that's listening to the podcast, but everybody on YouTube could see that I wore a orange and black striped sweater. Today I look like a tiger.

Maybe that's what primed me, to give that example.

It could be, but you're right. And I also think in modern life, the fact that so many people are stuck at home working hybrid roles, and you feel a sense of deep isolation, that you underestimate the difference that simply getting out, even alone and walking in your neighborhood, can have in you feeling connected.

Yeah, no, that's for sure. And I think if you take those two different examples, you going for a walk by yourself or you going for a walk with others, there are clearly benefits to you from the very fact of you going for a walk for yourself. It brings clarity of mind. It's certainly good for your health and all of those things. You may also happen to accidentally meet people when you're walking, and you can talk to them, which is an easy thing to do. It's not so easy when you're driving or cycling on a bike or whatever to do that. But the benefit from walking with others, of course, arises from the fact that humans are intensely and immensely social animals. And we get this feeling that it's been given a variety of different names. But the one that I like is effervescent assembly, which is the feeling of the dissolution between self and other. And people are walking together in a common cause, and we humans are the only species that do this. No chimpanzee has ever got up and gone on a protest march against the Alpha because they're unhappy with an edict that the Alpha has handed down.

But you see right throughout. Look at the history of the US over the last 50 or 100 years. You've got those amazing marches that happened in Washington. You've had the astonishing civil rights marches in the country next door, the UK. You had those huge marches against Brexit, which, sadly, were in effectual, but nonetheless, a million people who didn't know each other gathered together and walked the streets of London to protest a policy that they disagreed with. And we've had similar marches here for all sorts of reasons. And humans are unique because we will do this together. As I said, chimpanzees won't do it. Tigers, who we've spoken a moment ago, won't do it. Fire ants won't do it. This is something unique to us as humans.

If you even take that point that you just made and you distill it down to just something even more simple that's important to people's lives. I'm thinking about the fact that even when you join up with a group of friends and you decide to go on a walk in the afternoon, you are joining in solidarity in your friendship. And one of the things that I know that has made a huge difference in my life and it's one of the many reasons why I wanted to talk to you is when I moved to this new area just a year or so ago, it was forming a walking group with other women that had moved to the area. That made me feel suddenly more connected, it made me feel more optimistic, it made me feel a little bit more excited about being in someplace new. And so I hadn't thought that much about the fact that walking is something that we've done our whole lives. It's something we do in political protest, it's something that we do to form friendships. And that that is one of the many, many profound reasons why it's an important part of everybody's life.

But your book has also dug into to what I think is jaw dropping science about a simple walk. So before we kind of dig into all of it, can you talk a little bit about that 2018 study that tracked participants activity levels and personality traits over 20 years and how walking had impacted people over time?

One is one that looked at inactivity over time. And this was a US study, a so called panel study, tracking changes in personality and correlating those with activity or inactivity. And the bottom line is very, very simple, that people who spend increasing periods of time being sedentary as they move along in life, it's not a question of getting older this can be a midlife. They tend to show changes in their personality which are, for want of a better phrase, tending them towards being more asocial, being less open to experience and probably experiencing more by way of negative emotion compared to people who get up and get out and get moving. The other study that I'm thinking of is one that was conducted just a couple of years ago in older people, people in their late sixty s and early seventy s. And that study again a beautiful US study conducted in the Chicago area showed very clearly that if you are inactive, there are negative changes in the brain compared to people who are active. And the changes that are positive in the brain from activity arise from getting up and moving and getting out and going for a good walk.

So the intervention is a very simple intervention it's to go for a walk three times a week for a couple of miles along with a walking partner and a physiotherapist and what you see in the group that are active is brain changes that are really remarkable. You get an increase in the volume of certain brain regions that are concerned with memory, and you also get changes in the effectiveness, for want of a better phrase, of the memory that's supported by those brain regions. Whereas the people who are sitting at home, not active, they're showing a greater decline than they need to do if they had been active over that period of time. So the key point here to really to drag out is that being active positively supports good things about your personality, but it also reaches across to cognitive function. It supports positive things about memory function, and it helps you resist the trajectory of decline that you would have if you just are sitting on your couch doing the Homer Simpson, eating a bag of potato chips and watching Kelly.

I think that most of us underestimate what's actually happening in our bodies and in our minds when we're walking and so let's break it down what happens in the brain when you go for a walk?

Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things to think about here and it really depends on the level of analysis that you want to start at so let's make it kind of very simple. So I'm sitting here at home and I want to go to the shop. So the first thing that you have to do is form the intention that you're going to go and get up and do something. That could be because somebody's bleeped you or phoned you or whatever to say to come and meet them at the shop or you realize you need to go and pick up a pint of milk or whatever it happens to be. So what does that do? Well, the first thing is you have to stand up, you have to get up, you have to engage in preparatory movement in order to walk. That's a challenge for your brain. Sitting or lying down in a chair or being recumbent in a chair is not a challenge. Standing up, maintaining balance and then having directed coherent motion in the direction you want to go is also a challenge to your brain. So the key point here is that movement and the movement in this case we're talking about of course, is walking acts as a positive spur to the brain and rhythms that would be quiescent in the brain are suddenly alive.

They become very apparent. So in order to get to the shop, you have to orient your body in the correct direction. You have to create a cognitive map of the environment that you're in. These are all subtle, small challenges, but the brain benefits from these. And then let's say you are actually going to the shop and it happens to be up a hill for the sake of this point, well, then there are other challenges happening as well. So you have to calibrate your walking speed so that you're at a speed that's comfortable for you. That means you have to step up your heart rate a little, you have to increase your breathing a little, your musculature has to respond to all of those things. So you've got a whole load of top down signals from the brain acting as a challenge to the body to get it moving. And then you get to the shop, you do what you got to do and then you walk home again. You might have to carry something. So that's actually a good challenge for you as well. So even at those kinds of simple levels, you can see changes across a whole range of things, as I said, from the kind of top down commands that are coming from the brain all the way down to your foot hitting the ground and you levering yourself off and moving off.

Well, I certainly don't think about any of those things. When should you need to get well? But you said that the act of pushing yourself off the couch, standing up, triggering your mind to activate from the top down the mechanical patterns that allow you to walk, the cognitive patterns of surveying where you are and how you're going to get to a certain place, that all these things benefit the brain. How do they benefit the brain?

They benefit the brain because probably the best way to think about this is that movement is medicine is the lovely phrase that's going round at the moment. So think of an example. Let's imagine you own a bicycle and you get this lovely new bike from the shop and you put it in your garage and you leave it there for a year and you don't do anything with it. What condition is it going to be in? The chain is going to be all silted up. The tires have probably deflated the brakes aren't going to be especially responsive. All of those kinds of things will have gone wrong with it. And the same is true for your body. Your body needs to work optimally repeated challenge. Your brain needs this as well. This is why, for example, if you're walking for the sake of your heart, you need to step it up so that speaking is hard for you, so that there's a sufficient challenge being presented to you. Your body is obviously designed to do two things. One is to conserve energy, but the other is to source energy. And we always have this fight going on within us.

Am I going to get up if I'm going to get up? Am I going to take the car? Those kinds of choices we make, and they make sense again. When you think about the conditions that humans lived under for thousands of years, we didn't have the easy availability of calories that we have now. We didn't have chairs with backs. We sat on tree stumps, we sat down on our hunkers. But we didn't have all of these wonderful comforts that our big brains have allowed us to invent over the past 100 years and to spread around among us all. Even this fantastic conversation we're able to have. And I said, you don't need to be thinking about these things. This is the joy and the wonder of the body that we have. You don't need to be thinking, well, I have to maintain a certain line of balance. I have to, invoke my cognitive map, I have to put 1ft in front of the other. All of these things are done at a level below consciousness and you should only be thinking about them if something goes wrong. Like for example, you slip because there's a patch of ice or the shop is closed and you have to think about another shop you have to go to.

And one of the points that I make repeatedly in the book is that we've designed movement out of our environment. And again, this is perfectly understandable. We're trying to conserve energy. But if we want to get people moving again, what we really need to do is design the environment so that it's easy for people to walk. So give you a simple example. My local suburban town, which I live very close to, had quite narrow footpaths. It's a very old town. It's there since I guess, the eleven hundreds or something, and the footpaths are all kind of three foot wide. And priority was given foolishly to traffic, even though it's an old medieval town. The pandemic came and people were eating outside. That meant the traffic had to lose its position of primacy. The restaurants were able to, were allowed to put tables outside. That meant the footpaths had to be expanded. And suddenly the default is people are walking rather than driving. And that's a really nice thing. But to give you a contrary example, in my office. Sorry? In the building I work in. If you want to come and visit me in my office, you come in the door, and I'm up on the third floor.

How do you get to me? If you want to walk to me, you have to walk through four fire doors to get to the stairs. But if you want to take the lift or the elevator, as you call it, it's just there. So my building has a walking designed out of it, and that building will be, I guess, there for 100 years. So people will be not using the stairs in that building for 100 years. And this is an issue that generally we've created environments where the default is to conserve energy and not move. But we've got a food surplus, a caloric surplus. So actually what we should be doing is creating environments that make it easy for people to move around under their own steam.

One of my missions in wanting to talk to you is to have the person listening to us right now have an epiphany about the profound power and impact that incorporating a simple walk into your daily routine can have on you. And I know it wasn't until we started digging into your research that I honestly had no idea that a simple walk could have the chemical and structural and creative impact. And it made me wonder, why doesn't everybody take a walk every day? If it's free and it does all.

This, I want to kind of come back to some tips and some tools that people can use to start boosting brain health.

So what are the five best foods.

That you can eat for brain health?

So I have them almost every day. Salmon, especially wild salmon for the omega three fatty acids, berries. But they have to be organic. That's very important. So I'm a huge fan of blueberries. I often call them brain berries, but it's critical that they're organic, so people take blueberry extract. X has been shown to improve memory.

Okay.

Nuts and seeds. People who eat nuts and seeds on a regular basis have a lower incidence of depression and dementia. Leafy greens for the fiber and the magnesium. But my favorite one is raw cacao, or the main ingredient in chocolate. I don't chocolate because chocolate is filled with sugar and dairy and a lot of things that are really bad for you. But as a bonus, I want you to try this. I make brain healthy hot chocolate virtually every day.

How do you make it?

And so I get raw cacao. So for each serving, say the serving is like 12oz heaping teaspoon of raw cacao, unsweetened organic almond milk. And you could do with other nut milks, but I like almond milk, and there's a company called Sweet Leaf that makes liquid chocolate. So I heat up the milk, I mix in the raw cacao. I put a couple of dropperfuls of chocolate stevia and put it in a blender. It tastes amazing. And it's part of the ritual I have for happiness in my life. And this is a very important point. I only eat things I love that love me back. I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship. I have. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm like Mary friend and I'm damn sure not doing it with food. I am not going to be in because people go, I love Rocky road ice cream. Well, it beats you up. Or I love beer. Well, it shrinks your brain. And I'm like, no. Do I love it like I love my brain healthy hot chocolate and it loves me back. So whatever you eat or whatever you do, I mean, we're in a relationship with what we eat and what we do and is it a mutually positive relationship or is it destructive?

See, I love that there was an ambulance driving by in the background as my and our brain doctor were telling us to make hot chocolate. That was just a beautiful thing. I think that was the universe telling us all we need to have our brain healthy cacao with the stevia chocolate. Sweetener. I'm actually going to make one when we are done with this. What can we do to improve our memory, dr. Avon?

Well, improve your brain. It's like the most important thing. Think about this, Mel. 50% of people 85 and older will be diagnosed with dementia. Those are ODS I am not okay with. And if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the eleven major risk factors that steal your mind. And they know we don't have time to go in it. But the mnemonic I have is bright mind. So for example, maybe the most important thing, b is for blood flow. Whatever you can do to increase blood flow to your brain, you're going to be happier, your memory is going to be better, and you're going to be more sexual. Because whatever is good for your brain, good for your heart, is good for your genital.

So is that the brisk walking?

So you want to avoid things that steal blood flow, caffeine, nicotine, being sedentary, having any form of heart disease, and then you want to do things that enhance blood blood flow. So walking, raw cacao, beets, the supplement, ginkgo, these things all increase blood flow. Cinnamon, oregano, wow.

Okay.

I want to hear the r, though. Bright mind. I know that there's eleven, but give me two or three of them.

The R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. So constantly engage in new learning. The I is inflammation, but the one maybe to talk about more is the T. It's toxins and we live in a toxic society. Right here I am in Florida. I just talked about all the fish off the coast in Florida. On average, they have seven pharmaceuticals in their tissues, but just the products you put on your body. I have all of my patients download the app Think Dirty. It allows you to scan all of your personal products and it'll tell you, on a scale of one to ten, how quickly they're killing you.

Oh, my God.

We saw this year that the FDA took off a number of sunscreens off the market because they were associated with cancer. How horrifying is that? Right. You're thinking you're protecting yourself from cancer. The toxic products are giving you cancer. So think dirty. But also we have to stop thinking of alcohol as a health food. It's not. It's toxic to your brain or marijuana is innocuous. It's not. It damages your brain. And it's these little lies in our society that is really promoting the disease we are just flooded with.

So you've been a psychiatrist for 40 years. What are five things you'd never do because it's bad for your mental health and your brain health?

Well, I never believe every stupid thing I think, and I think that's really important to know. I'm going to get these crazy, stupid, awful thoughts, and I know how to manage and dismiss them. I would never say everything I think some people come to me and say, oh, Dr. Amon, I'm brutally honest? And I'm like, well, that's usually not helpful. Relationships require I would never purposely stay up late and screw up my sleep. I would never eat everything I want, and I would never take medicine just based on symptom clusters, like I'm depressed or take an antidepressant. I think that's all insane. I always want to look at the brain and then target whatever treatment I need to how somebody's brain is functioning.

Yeah.

The one thing I forgot to ask you, because right now, as you and I are talking, we've just turned the clocks back. But this time of year, when it gets darker earlier and it's colder, I notice, like, my mood drops and I feel, like, sad.

What do you do?

Whether it's because of the time of year or because of chronic stress, you feel this sort of languishing or heaviness set in. What are three things that you would recommend that somebody do to boost their mood?

So, morning bright light. I think that can be really helpful. So a bright light therapy lamp for 20 or 30 minutes in the morning, exercise, don't overdo the caffeine. And it's really important. We haven't talked about this yet. Turn off blue light when the sun goes down.

What is blue light?

Constantly flooded with blue light. And in the morning it's fine, but after dark, it's not, because it decreases the production of melatonin. So you get it from your laptop or you get it from your phone or you get it from whatever gadgets you might be looking at. And so after dark, either put blue light blockers on your gadgets or just turn them off and go read a book.

Okay, great. And I also didn't ask you this. How do you know if your dopamine.

Levels are low, if you're tired, if you're unmotivated, if you can't concentrate, and you find yourself more impulsive than it's good for you?

And finally, let's bottom line, because you are the master at elite brain training, if you could leave everyone with just one thing that you would like them to start doing today to create better brain health, what would it be?

That mother tiny habit. It's whenever you come to a decision point in your day, just ask yourself, am what I'm doing good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that with information and love, I mean, I'm serious about this. Love of yourself, love of your family, love the reason you're on earth. You're going to start making good decisions for your brain and then everything in your life will be better.

Dr. Raymond, you're so awesome.

How do you know if you're getting enough sleep? Based on the things that you study?

Yes.

Because you hear 8 hours.

How many hours do you sleep, by the way?

The older I get, the more boring I am, so I would say nine or ten.

Yeah. I love that. People who sleep less than 6 hours have higher mortality, they have lower mood, and they are hungrier. As we said with the leptin, what you want to do is really to realize how much sleep you need is when you sleep without an alarm, how many hours do you sleep? And not when you're sleep deprived, but.

Oh, I bet I sleep 10 hours.

Yeah.

If I don't have an alarm on, I sleep way longer than I think I'm going to.

When you look at the last couple of weeks of your life, yes. The best days when you felt the most refreshed, the best mood, were the.

Days I got the highest amount of sleep by far.

That's how much sleep you need. And every American that's listening to this is going to be like, I can't sleep that much. But you think about your best days of your life happened when you slept adequately. It changes your hunger hormones. It changes your hormones in general, for women especially, as we get older, this is important. It changes your mood, it changes your ability to make decisions and your interactions with other people. So why would you want to skimp on that? Why would you say that you'll be like everybody else sleep when you're dead? When you look at the data, the data says opposite. It says if you don't sleep, you'll be dead much earlier.

That's true.

If you don't sleep, you will be more depressed, more anxious, have more hunger and craving signals. You are going to be a version of yourself that is a shell of what you want to be.

So one final thing that I think would be extremely helpful to people. Let's assume that we went to bed early, and we wake up and we get a good night's sleep. Can you walk us through what you would recommend? The eating routine or what is on our plate and when are we actually eating?

Okay.

For complete hormone balance.

Okay. So as you know, everybody is different, and their life circumstances are different. Every time I do this, people say, oh, but I work night shift, or I have little kids. I get it. I had many years where I didn't get enough sleep, where I didn't get enough sunlight, where I couldn't make the best decisions because I was just so pulled, know all the different directions. So I get it. But we didn't even talk about circadian rhythms. But Mel, sunlight and darkness run our bodies. We have internal clocks in every one of our cells, so routines are excessively important in terms of our mood and our body, our nutrition. So when you wake up in the morning, you want to get sunlight. I have a rule that I learned from someone online. Basically, I did this for a few days, and I felt the best I've ever felt. And I'll tell you what it is. When you wake up, instead of scrolling your phone, checking your messages, and your emails, go get sunlight first. Sky before screens.

OOH, I love that.

So sky before screens is how you should start your day. Your body is wired to see sunlight in the morning. Even if it's a cloudy day, it just has to be bright light.

Okay.

You can just walk out outside for me, it's my back door. Just walk out for a few minutes. It could be two to ten minutes you could do for me. I'm usually just in my pajamas, so I'm coming back in and getting ready for the day. Okay, so you don't want to have food or caffeine in the first 45 minutes of your day.

Why?

I'll tell you why. When you wake up, you feel groggy, right?

Yes.

That grogginess is partially mostly from adenosine in your brain.

Adenosine.

Adenosine.

Okay.

And it clears out, as you know, within 30, 40 minutes, it clears out. Then you have your coffee, then you eat your food. And the reason why is coffee, the way it works, it blocks our adenosine receptor. So that means that it doesn't help get rid of that Denisine. It just blocks it from actually binding. Okay, so if you don't let that denosine clear out and you just drink your coffee, when the coffee wears off in a couple of hours, that adenosine is still there, and it just binds those receptors, and you feel excessively tired.

And that's why you think you need another cup of coffee.

And then you're fully dependent. Like, the people that wake up and they need the coffee right then, and then they need it again at, like, 10:00, and then they need it again at. 01:00. It's because you're not letting that adenosine whoa. Go.

Okay.

You need to let that clear out.

I'm guilty of this, so I am going to try this tomorrow. I am going to absolutely have my coffee, and then oh, no, I'm not. I'm going to wake up. I'm going to wait 45 minutes, then I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to see if I have a craving for a second cup. Yes, that is fascinating.

Okay, so you want to let it clear out naturally, because it's not going to clear out naturally if you start the caffeine cycle right away.

Got it. So clear it out for 45 minutes. Get our son in. What's next?

Eat.

Okay.

No intermittent fasting.

So everybody I love intermittent fasting.

Then why are we eating?

Because I do it the opposite way.

Talk to me.

There's very good evidence that for thousands of years, we ate in one scheduled way, which is daylight hours.

Oh.

There was no microwaves Uber eats. They had a fire. And you'd maybe eat an hour or two after sundown. That's it, right?

Yeah.

You are not snacking at midnight. There's nowhere to store the food. Thousands of years ago, our internal clocks are set so that when melatonin hits two to 3 hours before bed, your organs shut down. You cannot process sugar as well as you did. You can't take it into your muscles. You're not releasing digestive enzymes. So basically, when you're eating late at night, you are waking your body up in the middle of the night and asking it to do a math problem. Your body is going to be like, I don't want to do this. I'm going to make mistakes. You wake up and you're tired and you're pissed that someone woke you up in the middle of the night. That's what happens when you eat late at night.

Holy smokes. You put your body in conflict with itself.

Yeah. So intermittent fasting, everyone's doing it the wrong way. They're eating way late into the night, and then they don't eat all day when the sun is out.

Right.

Like, that's the time that your body's ready for food. Right. So ideally, you wait an hour because nobody needs to be eating every minute of every day. Americans just we just eat 14 to 16 hours a day. It's just too much. Right. So you wake up, maybe you get some movement in, you get your sunlight. You eat about an hour or two. Even after you wake up, you don't need to push it to two. 304:00 people are doing this thing. There's good evidence that skipping meals is actually bad for you and that people who do it habitually actually have worse health outcomes.

Okay, got it.

So eat your breakfast. You want to have a high dopamine breakfast? Let's have cottage cheese, eggs, tofu scramble, veggies, nuts, berries.

Great.

When do I eat next, then? You're already hungry. No. Am I hungry right now?

Yeah.

Would I eat vegetables?

I would eat vegetables.

There you go.

So that must mean I'm hungry. But I got to have a glass of water first. And then I'm going to ask myself that again.

Yes, I'm learning. Then you tune in with the inner mel, the brain gut melt.

Yes. Okay.

So then you can eat when you're hungry again. You can use your inner cues. Could be twelve, could be one, whatever. Your inner cues.

Okay.

You'll notice your ghrelin is set on a timer every day you'll get hungry at the same time.

So hello. Ghrelin. It just I think dumped on me.

Yeah.

So what do you eat for lunch?

So basically lunch is a chance for you to get the healthier you eat earlier in the day, the better your chance of sticking to it. So they always say exercise and eating healthier foods, breakfast and lunch is your best chance. So for me I automated and I had already talked to you when we had talked before that I try to eat the same things every day.

So what do you eat for lunch?

So I eat a salad for lunch. I usually put a protein source on it. It could be different beans, nuts, get tofu. You could do eggs, you could do salmon, whatever you want. Protein and veggies, a salad with protein on it. And I always have a fermented probiotic food with my lunch because that's the best time for you to get in at least one to two servings of the kimchi of the sauerkraut. It could be kombucha for a drink, apple cider vinegar in your dressing. So that's when you have the best chance. Really simple. It can be very simple. And then your dinner is when you want to eat. If you are someone, yes, you're learning.

I'm paying attention.

So I know it's not sexy to say eat carbs, but carbs actually can be very healthy for you. Especially in vegetable form. Sweet potato, quinoa, whatever it is, you can eat that later in the day if you want to have that big boost of serotonin.

And what about snacks?

If I'm like legit hungry but I'm.

Not really craving anything. Yes, but I'm legit hungry. Midday. What's your go to snack?

So remember that protein has this effect on your body that it tells your hunger to hunger hormones to stop. So if you want more leptin, eat more protein. So your snack can be yogurt, your snack can be a protein shake, your snack can be piece of cheese, something with protein because that will keep your dopamine levels up and it will keep your hunger hormones stable. So protein snack. I think women especially, we're eating just too little protein. There is a theory that the reason we get fat from eating ultra processed food is because it's so low in protein that your brain never gets the signal that you're full. Your protein threshold is never met.

Wow.

One final thing I want to ask you, because we didn't really cover it.

Gluten.

Everybody I know is gluten free.

Yeah, it's not the gluten. There's very few people who are actually allergic to gluten. It is very common to have GI issues with processed gluten. So when you eat a lot of bread, pizza, carbs but that's not the gluten itself. It's the fact that you're eating processed food. So gluten gets mislabeled all the time. What I say to people is, go gluten free for a few weeks, three to four weeks. See how you feel. When you add the gluten back. Don't add back the bread, the cookies, the cakes, and the processed gluten. Add back a small wheat bulgar, like in a salad.

Okay?

Add back a healthy sourdough bread, add back wheat in small, unprocessed amounts, and then see how you feel. And what I realized is that people villainize gluten all the time, and in America, gluten free has become such a tagline that those foods are more unhealthy.

Oh, because of all the processing. Look at you. Dr. Amy, is there anything else on this topic that we did not get?

I think we covered so much. I think, like you said, and I have taken this to heart, is that there is no pill that's going to save you. There is no person that's going to save you. When you learn about all this, when you actually listen to your own self, you are going to be the one who saves yourself.

Well, Dr. Amy Shaw, let me just say thank you, because without this information, we can't save ourselves. And you've explained the internal, extremely elegant, but complicated systems inside of us so that it makes sense, so that we understand why these choices, these substitutions, why it actually matters. Let's use nutritional science to leverage willpower, everybody? I want to keep digging into the.

Protein, and I think that's really important to understand, because the average American, by the way, the average woman is getting around maybe 60 to 68, if I'm going to be generous grams of protein a day.

And how many do we need to be getting as women?

I recommend 1 gram, close to 1 gram per pound.

Ideal body weight. What? Yeah.

And I even calculated this out for you. Okay, you ready for this? I did this calculation.

My ideal body weight is 138. That's when I always feel my best.

So for you, if you were my patient, I would say, listen, Mel, in order for us to correct for muscle, health, metabolism, satiety, then I would put you at roughly, easily a minimum of 100 grams of protein. But between 100 to 120, maybe even 130 grams of protein, I feel like.

I'm going to gain weight. There, I said it. There, I said it.

No way.

I said I'm going to gain weight. That sounds like a lot. See, I think I'm so indoctrinated. I don't know if there's a salad lobby that has been petitioning all of us psychologically. But I hear that intellectually, I know I got to start taking care of my muscle organ. I'm in. I want to think clearer. I want to lose the belly fat. I want to have more energy. God forbid something happened to me. I want to be strong enough to fight it off. I also look at my 85 year old mother in law who has biceps and exercises and resistant trains, and the woman is an Energizer Bunny at the age of 86. I want to be like that. And so I'm in. The second you said mel, it's between 100 and 130 grams of protein a day. I'm like, I am not becoming a weebly wobble on legs. Dr. Gabrielle and I think that's exactly what a lot of us women who've been socialized to think that we have to be thin. That's our reaction. But it just goes to show you how fucked up this all is. Yes, the science isn't fucked up.

Our psychology and the mixed messages and the diets we've been sold and the fact that I'm just going to speak for me, but everybody listening has no idea that this is what your muscles do, right?

And by the way, I calculated the amount of calories that we would be talking about so I could clarify it for you. Are you ready?

Lay it on me.

So let's say you increased your dietary protein to 100 grams of protein a day.

Okay?

That would be a total of 400 calories. Wait, what now?

What are you eating?

Wait, that's it? But there's something I didn't tell you, okay? I didn't tell you. Is that the thermic effect of food or this thermic effect of feeding, meaning when you eat dietary protein, it, because of its impact on muscle, increases metabolism. So while you're thinking, well, I'm going to eat 100 grams of protein and I'm going to get 400 calories, sometimes, depending on how you dose it, you will use 20% of that energy to just metabolize that protein. It would be very difficult to gain weight, and it would be so difficult to gain weight. You are not going to put on weight from increasing your dietary protein. And in fact, the studies show that so they've done overfeeding protein studies. Do you want to know what happens when people quote overeat protein?

I do.

Their body compositions get better. And you know what that means? It means they lose fat.

So by eating more protein, the research shows in all these studies and in the work that you've done for 20 years, that when people focus on muscle health, resistance training, and a protein forward diet, they lose fat.

They lose fat. Obviously, calories have to be controlled, but they lose fat and they gain muscle. You gain tissue, your body composition improves.

Yeah, I just had this visual that traditionally, I keep saying, we keep thinking about this in reverse. Everybody you're focused on losing fat when you should be focused on gaining muscle. And when you gain muscle, you actually lose the extra weight that you don't want. And I keep thinking about the fact that you look at somebody that's sedentary or heavy and you see the extra weight that they're carrying, and you think about, okay, well, how am I going to get them to diet and do stuff so that we can get rid of that weight? And what I just got is inside that body is an organ called muscles. There's the architecture of a healthy human being, and you can activate the healthy human being that is inside the unhealthy body. And as you start to really strengthen your muscles, we'll get into resistance training in a minute that starts to emerge from the inside out.

Yes.

And all of the extra weight and all of the disease and complications and symptoms that come with having what is an insufficient muscular system. If you start with strengthening from the inside out, it overtakes all of the unhealthy stuff on the outside, and that's what you see emerging. And if you think about these before and after photos that you see in these challenges online or whatever that people use to market diets or weight loss programs or weightlifting programs, we are looking at them wrong. Because what we're thinking is we're thinking that somebody is like, somehow dieting and shrinking. What you're actually seeing is the muscle health emerging.

Yes.

I just got it.

You got it.

That is so cool.

And it's not about what we have to lose. It's about what do we have to gain? It's this way of leveraging your system to create flux and movement so then this healthy body emerges.

Why is this so important for women specifically?

I think women have really gotten this constant narrative about, oh, you've hit menopause now you're going to have a menopausal belly, and you're going to gain about 30 pounds, and it's going to be, this is how it's going to be. That does not have to happen. There are ways in which you can manage your body composition through diet and training. Again, we are leveraging protein and food as medicine and movement as medicine, rather than taking something external. I mean, I guess food would be technically external, but here's what I would tell and why it's so important for a menopausal postmenopausal woman. There is a natural decline in these hormones estrogen, progesterone. There's an imbalance of testosterone which can affect body composition. But one of the ways it affects body composition is we move less. We are less active. The way to combat that is through very simply doing some kind of resistance training, which simply means, again, against an external load. It doesn't have to be complicated, and it's not necessarily as difficult as people think. I've been seeing patients since 2006. I have seen a lot of midlife women, and I've seen a lot of success.

Okay, what do we do? Dr. Gabrielle, I just heard. Do you hear that? That was women in 194 countries around the world turning up the dial. What do we do?

Here's what they're going to do. They're going to make it super easy. Their first meal of the day is going to have between 30 and 50 grams of protein, easy. I don't care if it's a whey protein shake. I don't care if it's mel's pea protein shake. I care I don't necessarily want it to be collagen because collagen, while great for other things, is not great for muscle.

Okay?

So collagen is a different separate kind of protein. It has a protein score of what is considered zero. It's still great, but we're not going to put in the category of muscle health.

Thank you for saying that, because here I am making my smoothie and I'm adding the mushroom stuff for the hot flashes and I'm adding the protein powder and I don't even know if it's got the lupin thing in it. Then I put in the collagen because A, I'm like hair and nails, people. And two, I'm thinking that's another ten to 20 grams of protein. So I can put that in the 50 protein column. And what you're saying is mel, that is good for your hair and nails, but when it comes to complex amino acids, that protein scores a big fat. So now I'm learning something. This is really good. Like a pro.

Homie.

You are a pro. Thank you.

So all these women in a million different countries, you've got your dial turned up. You're going to make it so simple. This is legitimately fail proof. You are going to have between 30 and 50 grams of protein at that first meal.

Got it.

Then if you were saying, well, Gabrielle, doc G, I want to add some carbohydrates, I'm going to say, you know what, go right ahead. You're not going to have over 30 grams or so of carbohydrates for that first meal because we don't want to kind of skew this insulin and give you this robust response. Again. I'm giving Broad generalization.

Got it.

Okay.

But we're just going to define it and design it so that people can execute right away.

Great.

You can have a little bit of berries. You can mix it in water. You can mix it in almond juice or whatever it is that you want. Something not major that is calorically dense. Okay, you've done that. You're doing great. Another meal. Maybe you want some kind of smaller meal in the day. Maybe it has 20 grams of protein and 20 grams of carbohydrates. What does that look like? That could be three eggs. It could be your chicken salad. It could be whatever it is that you want. I'm not so crazy about that one.

Love you for that. Thank you.

You're welcome. The last meal, if you're having two larger meals and a smaller meal, in the middle. Your last meal is also important because you're getting ready to go into an overnight fast. Okay, so you woke up in the morning coming out of an overnight fast. Your skeletal muscle, your organ of longevity, is primed for nutrients. You stimulate muscle with your dietary protein. You've done an amazing job. You've improved your signaling. You've made your muscle youthful. You are no longer hungry. Your body is now metabolizing things. We're not gaining weight. We are really setting you up for success. Your next meal is a little smaller. Your meal, your last meal of the day is going to mirror your first meal.

Oh, I thought you said it was smaller.

No, your middle meal is smaller.

Okay, got it. So now I'm doing my 30 to 50. I'm having my protein shake or my hamburger with my salad or whatever else.

The last meal of the day is between 30 and 50 grams of protein. You want your burger, you want your chicken, you want your salmon?

Great.

You have now nailed it. Well, you will. By the way, if people understand the concepts in this book, you will lose body fat by just addressing the dietary component of protein, which is mind blowing. You will improve your body composition by changing your dietary protein for breakfast, by simply doing that, by swapping out your cereal, by adding in dietary protein. We have seen huge changes in body composition simply by doing that. And also, by the way, some of this data was isocaloric, meaning people both had the same amount of calories. They were both taking in 1600 calories. And the postmenopausal women, what one group did was change the first meal of the day to have an optimal protein. It was around 40 grams of protein. And then the second group had around I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was probably closer to 50 grams of carbohydrates and 13 grams of protein, which is what most women are doing now. And the body composition effects were negative for the carbohydrate group versus the protein group. They lost weight. And again, calories were the same. So it was simply changing around the macronutrients.

Okay, can you talk a little bit to the vegetarians and folks that have a vegan diet? Like, what are the considerations as you're thinking protein forward and the amino acid sand particle aspect of the macronutrient in protein?

Yes. All dietary protein is not created equal.

Okay?

Ideally, you are eating whole foods. So now this brings us to this category of dietary protein. And what makes up dietary protein. How do we score it? How do we think about it? An overarching way to do this, very simply, is that anything that is of animal nature that means does it run, does it swim, does it I don't know. Walk is a high quality protein.

Okay?

It is considered a high quality protein. And what defines high quality protein is we talked about that there are 20 different amino acids.

Got it.

We're obviously not going into those 20, but there are a handful of essential amino acids.

And are those not present in plant based proteins?

They're very low in plant based proteins. So what would you have to do? You would have to over consume or increase your consumption of these plant based proteins to bring up that level of essential amino acids.

Got it.

And I'm going to give you a very clear example. I'm just going to lay it out on there so nobody has to do any math.

Okay.

So let's say you are going to eat three or 4oz of a beef patty, a lean beef patty that has this essential amino acid, leucine. Leucine is the critical amino acid for muscle health.

Okay.

Remember, you and I were talking about how each amino acid had these dual roles, and we weren't going to go into all 20, but there are a handful that are really important and critical for health and well being.

Okay.

One of those amino acids is leucine. And leucine what's so fascinating is that it requires a certain amount to trigger skeletal muscle. So essentially, if you're eating under that amount, then you're not actually stimulating this mechanics of skeletal muscle. Oh, 3oz of three to 4oz of a lean beef patty would stimulate muscle, would give you this whatever, number two and a half grams of leucine to trigger the muscle. To begin to have this process. If you were to try to do that in quinoa, you would need six cups of quinoa because of the difference in the amino acid profile to trigger muscle the same way.

Wow.

That's not a good plan. First of all, that's a lot of quinoa. Second of all, that's like carbicide. You don't want to be doing that.

Carbicide is a word.

Yeah.

No.

Well, it can be now.

Wow.

I think you should trademark that. Is there a supplement for our friends that are vegetarian or vegan that they can take to up the Lysine or to get the amino acids without having to overdose on quinoa? It's important to understand because I sit here and I drink smoothies a lot because they're easy and I use a plant based formula. And here I am, like, dumping more scoops in thinking I'm loading up and I'm protein forward, and you're sitting here telling me, not really, not necessarily, because it might not have the thing on it. But you know what? But I know I'm doing something, and that's better than nothing.

But you are. Mel, I'm going to interrupt you because you're doing great.

Thank you.

The plant based protein powders is a way to begin to balance these amino acids because they've made it in a way where they've balanced these amino acids. Okay, so this is a way to do it.

Great. You're talking about if you're doing whole foods, like, you got to be really foods. Exactly.

If you are doing whole foods and not adding supplements, you may need a total of 35% more dietary protein.

I love that. Okay. How does breathing impact your sleep.

In terms of insomnia? There's two times it can manifest. And insomnia affects about 30% of the population.

Wow.

And 10% have it chronic. One is that we go to bed at night, but we don't fall asleep readily. Typically, we should fall asleep in a few minutes. That's an ideal situation. But if we have overstimulation of the mind, we're not going to fall asleep so readily. So it's very important to be able to go into relaxation before we go to sleep. Now, that would involve, I would say, use blue light filter glasses and follow sleep hygiene. Your bedroom is cool, it's airy, it's dark and all of that stuff. But also we need to tell the body that we're going into rest and digest. So you could be sitting down. You might be watching some light TV. You might have your blue light filtered glasses on. And as you're sitting there, really take a soft breath in through your nose almost that you're breathing less air. And that's what I would like you to do. You're taking a really soft breath in through your nose and you're having that light and a really slow, slow, slow, relaxed, gentle breath out. And then when you need to breathe in again, instead of taking your normal 100% of the breath, maybe take in about 70% of the breath in and then a really soft and slow, gentle breath out.

And the whole aim is to breathe about 30% less air into your body than what you're normally used to. You know you're doing it correctly if you feel a slight air hunger. Now, as you do that, pay attention to the slive in the mouth. So we'll continue for one more minute. I would like you to underbreed mel. I would like you to breathe in a way that you feel that you're not getting enough air. How do you do that? Take a very, very soft, gentle breath in, almost as if your breath in is imperceptible. And a really relaxed and a slow and a gentle breath out. So gently soft and then slow down your breathing so that you're taking 30% less air into your lungs. If you get stressed, just take a rest. But keep working on this because now what you're doing is you're telling the brain that everything is okay and pay attention then to dislive in the mouth. When we get stressed, our mouth tells us because our mouth goes dry when we are ready for rest and digest. Rest, we feel sleepy digest. We have increased water slive in the mouth.

So when we alter our breathing, we're stimulating the vagus nerve, which is secreting that neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is telling the heart to slow down. The brain is interpreting that the body is safe. And the brain is also spying on our breathing at the same time and interpreting that the body is safe. So we feel sleepy, and we do this for 1015 minutes before we go to sleep.

I know that you recommend people try this tape on their mouth when they sleep. And I tried it for the first time last night. I did not have this fancy oring, so I used packing tape. I know that that's probably not what you recommend. And when I pulled it off this morning, I think I gave my upper lip a wax, but I put it from the nose down so that the sides were exposed. And I learned something really interesting. I put the tape on my mouth so that I would be cueing myself to nose breathe. And it's how I sleep. And I'm a fantastic sleeper. And I realized I sleep predominantly with my mouth closed. And my husband, on the other hand, he has this sound that he makes that goes it drives me freaking crazy. I know it's sleep apnea. I also know that 1 billion people around the world have obstructive sleep apnea. 1 billion. How does this nose breathing improve? Even people's lives with obstructive sleep apnea?

Okay, so Obstructive sleep apnea is when the person stops breathing for 10 seconds or more during sleep. That will be an apnea or a hypopne is when there's a reduction in the flow of their breathing due to partial collapse of the airways, that their blood oxygen saturation drops down by about three or 4%. The problem with sleep apnea is that it arouses you from deep sleep, but it's very stressful. It's very stressful on the cardiovascular system. There are four characteristics in obstructive sleep apnea. It's not just the anatomy. So insomnia that we spoke about earlier on is one of them. So it's very important to be able to down regulate upper airway muscle recruitment. Getting these muscles to do their job is very important. There's a therapy called myofunctional therapy that's excellent for that mouth closed with the tongue resting up in the roof of the mouth with good recruitment of the diaphragm helps to open up the airway. So you think of the typical middle aged man. We're drinking a few beers. We're putting weight on the belly. This is impacting the movement of the diaphragm. We're now breathing more upper chest. This is reducing lung volume, and the throat collapses more easily.

Our diaphragm breathing muscle, as I said earlier, is connected with the brain, but the diaphragm is also connected with the upper airway dilator muscles in the throat. So coming back to mouth puffing and the mouth closed is really important with obstructive sleep apnea. And there are a group of people with severe obstructive sleep apnea and people who may be obese as well. They're more prone to mouthpuffing. You still need to allow them to mouth puff during sleep. And we were lucky with the design of the tape, the MyoTape, because it allows. The mouthpuffing. Whereas before that, we were using three m one inch micropore tape, which is going right across the lips. But that doesn't allow mouthpuffing, and that can make sleep apnea worsen. Some people. So I'm going to come back to sleep apnea with taping of them out tested. In mild people with mild obstructive sleep apnea, just getting your mouth closed reduces the Ahi, which is sleep apnea severity, by 33%.

Wow.

So just with mild, just by getting them out closed, that's not looking at how do you improve your breathing patterns? If you have somebody with obstructive sleep apnea and they bring nose breathing into their everyday life, they learn to slow down their breathing. They learn to have good recruitment of the diet from all simple skills that you bring into your everyday life. That will help your sleep apnea for moderate to severe. Overall, it helps when you get the mouth closed also. But for some people with moderate to severe, they need to be allowed to mouthpuff. So whatever you use as support to get the lips together, make sure it allows you to mouthpuff.

Got it. Well, I'm going to make sure to tape my husband's mouth with your tape, and I'm going to stop shoving him or pinching his nose when he goes. Patrick, you are a gift to all of us. You have just given us all a free tool that we were born with to activate our natural intelligence, to lower our stress, to get better sleep, to be more present in our lives, and to learn how to access the profound power of breathing in and out of your nose, low and slow.

What is your secret to staying young at heart and young in your mind?

Staying connected. Staying connected to your friends? Old friends. I've always had a man in my life. I've been very lucky about that.

What does that mean?

I've always had a man in my life because how long were you married?

45 years. He died of cancer.

How old were you?

68.

Okay.

And about a year and a half later, I met a man, and I thought I'd fallen in love, and my children thought it was way too early for me to have a man in my life.

I didn't feel that way.

Well, you're not one of my boys.

I don't think Chris felt that way either.

Well, the other two did, but I don't think they remembered that Ken was sick for two years.

That's true.

So I was alone for two years as far as having someone loving me.

Yeah.

So I was with Bill for a while, and we had our differences, and after two years, we went our separate ways. And soon after that, I met another guy who is local and you know, Hans and I were together for ten years.

Ten years?

Yeah. Can you believe that?

No. Yeah, we were.

Wow.

But he's the nicest, sweetest man, as you know. But he just doesn't have the energy that I have.

Yeah.

And I was constantly arranging all our social life and all our trips. We did a lot of traveling, but.

I was the one that was doing it.

And so I eventually got him to move back into his own house and.

Then down the line into a retirement.

Community, which he's very happy and I still see him. And we're very good friends.

Yes, very good friends.

We love hands.

And then I met another guy who's in town, and actually it was me who met John. Yeah, I mean, I knew John, but I saw him at this artist thing.

You were there?

Oh, this is when I first moved here. And I was having constant anxiety and hating my life and thinking, I'm now going to a place where people live when they're about to die.

Yeah, I didn't realize that's where you met him. Okay, well, I didn't meet him. I already knew him.

Okay.

But something else was happening later in the week. I don't know, some concert or something. And so I just went up to.

John and I said, Would you like to go? And he said, yeah, but he also had a girlfriend in Canada, so that went on for a while. And then he gave her up and.

He picked you up.

Yeah. And so we're together and he makes me very happy. And he has a lot of energy and he organizes everything. Like going to a dude ranch. We just got back from a dude.

Ranch, as you know. Yes.

So, 85 years old, the two of you go off on your first trip together, and you go to a dude ranch in Montana where, I understand you.

Are learning how to herd cattle on horseback. Yeah, we did.

We did a cattle drive. It was awesome.

And you're not like a horse person.

This is not like a horse. Well, how long had it been since.

You had truly been on a horse, though? I don't know, 40 years.

All right, so staying connected, but you.

Went for long periods of time. Not in relationships, though.

No, actually, I probably started seeing Hans about a month after I broke up with Bill.

Jesus, Judy.

Wow.

So you see, I haven't been fortunate. I'm very fortunate that way.

Yeah.

Well, you create what you want and.

You put yourself out there.

And I also notice that connection to.

Friends is very important.

Extremely important.

So how did you stay so connected.

To your friends when your friends literally.

Live all over the world?

Well, actually, Mel, I have to give you some credit here.

Me?

Yes, you. Because after Ken died and I didn't have anybody in my life, and I'll.

Never forget this either.

This is before you started into the business. I rented an apartment in New York, as you remember.

Oh, yeah. By myself, which was kind of a.

Lonely experience, actually, because I went to dinner by myself. But of course, as soon as people realized I had an apartment, they started coming. But it's still being in a big city alone can be very lonely, right.

Because you see people everywhere.

Yeah.

But I was right next to the Hudson River, so I was running, and I took my bike. So I stayed active physically. But I remember mentioning to you that I was going to go to Florida.

I didn't know what I was going to do.

And you said to me, pick up.

The phone and call some of your.

Friends and make sure you have something on your calendar before you hit the ground in Florida. I'll never forget that. And it made a difference because I had something to look forward to.

Yeah.

Otherwise, I just had a blank slate, and I probably could have felt pretty sorry for myself.

Yeah. But even beyond that, you have kept.

In close touch with your women friends.

Yes. It's very important to do that.

And how do you do that? You pick up the phone and call them.

You know, it's so many people go around the back door.

And I'm going to give you an example.

I have a good friend who has Alzheimer's, and she's young, and she admitted that she has Alzheimer's, so she's very open about it. And she recently, her husband got her on the new drug, the Alzheimer's drug, by biogen this winter. He was very glad that he did, and she was glad that she was on it. Three days ago, she went out to lunch with a very good friend of mine and said to her friend, and my friend, you know, I just had a physical, and I'm 100% all right. I don't have Alzheimer's.

Really?

So obviously, she's coming all the way around into the denial, which she wasn't before. So this is my point. Shirley said, do you think I should call Marcia and tell her, marcia being a good friend of yours? And I said, well, why would you do that? Why don't you call Bob, her husband? Why don't you go directly to Bob? He might already know that she said.

That, but he might not, and say.

To him, I just had lunch with Connie, and this is what she said. And this is what's so important in life, is that if you have a good friend that you want to talk to, talk to them. Don't talk to your other friend that's a friend of your you know, if you want to talk to somebody on the phone, call them. And I don't think a lot of people do that.

They talk about their friends, but they don't talk to their friends.

That's right. Yeah. If you're thinking about somebody, pick up the phone and call them.

If you have something that you're concerned about, pick up the phone and call them. Don't talk about what you're concerned about.

Well, we have another friend that is now into dementia, but is not admitting it. And the scary thing is that they're thinking maybe her husband has it, too. And I haven't said anything, but I'm thinking that I need to go to Sally and say to her, are you worried about yourself? Because everybody's talking about her, but nobody's talking to her. And maybe she would say to me.

What are you talking about? I'm fine. Right. Or maybe she'd break down and say, It's true. I don't know what I'm really doing. Yeah, because she doesn't. Wow.

There was one other thing that I would love to touch on, because service has been such an enormous part of your life. And volunteering, after your husband of 45.

Years, Ken, died, you moved to Cambodia. Well, I didn't move. Well, what did you do?

You did something that is just incredible.

Well, I went on a bike trip to Vietnam, and I visited Cambodia, and I fell in love. I fell in love with the people in Said, and I was with Bill at the time. I said, I'm going to come back.

Here and teach English.

And so I got a hold of this NGO, Cambodia Living Arts, and asked.

Them if they could find me someplace.

Where I could teach, which is really quite ballsy since I don't know anything about teaching. I know how to talk English or.

Speak I know she talks English.

Well, everybody but that's it. Anyway, yeah, they got me a position in this school that the kids go to, a regular school, but they come here to learn English after school.

Yes.

And I mean, I had monks in that class. I had mothers in that class. Oh, my God, it was hysterical. And you've heard me say this. This was quite an experience.

How many years did you go to Cambodia? Six years.

You'd live there for almost three months.

And teach seven days a week.

Plus your daughter came, and our daughter.

When she was in 8th grade, went.

Over and fell in love.

Fell in love. And she's actually on her way back because of that experience as we speak.

Wow.

Talk to us about staying young at.

Heart, because at the heart of every.

One of these stories, there's very similar themes.

You have to create what you want in your life. Right. Connection is incredible.

And you have this wonderful sense of.

Humor about you where you just try it like you don't even stop yourself.

And think, well, how's this going to work? I'm moving to Cambodia. I'm 69 years old. I'm going to do this alone. I don't even know what I'm doing. How is this going to work?

You just are like, okay, let's do this. We're going to figure it out. So how do you stay young at heart?

What do you think that's about?

Well, I go back again about living in the moment, and I don't take any day for granted that I have. I mean, I'm really grateful for every day I have.

Yeah. And that's the only thing I can say.

I mean, I think most people live their lives like, well, of course they'll be tomorrow. There was yesterday, they'll be tomorrow, they'll be next week, I can do this, I can do that. Well, who's to say? We have a friend who just was on his motorcycle.

Bingo.

Yeah.

So that keeps me positive because I'm grateful. I'm so grateful. First of all, I have a fabulous life. I have an incredible family, all these grandchildren.

I'm not sick, I'm healthy, I have.

All my knees and all my hips.

So I'm very grateful.

You don't have your hair between your legs, though.

No.

Well, some people pay for a Brazilian. That's true.

You're grateful.

You don't have to pay for that.

No, I don't.

But there's something else that you talked.

About which is adding stress, because there's a lot of people around the world that have their health, that have a great family, that have friends around them, and they're miserable.

Well, because they're expecting something else that.

They don't have, and there is nothing else. You have what you have right now.

At the moment, and don't expect anything more. And I think people live in a.

Lot of disappointment because they think about.

What they'd like to have or what their neighbor has or something other than.

What they have this moment, and that.

Creates the stress, because if there's something.

Out there that you want and you don't have it, that's stress in itself. Right.

Well, what's also amazing about that perspective.

Is if you're not happy and grateful for the things that you have now, why on earth do you think you're going to be happy and grateful when you get something you don't have?

And how do you know you're going to have it?

Yeah, like, you need to learn how.

To appreciate everything on the way. Exactly.

And until you do that, you're never going to be happy.

No, because you're always going to be.

Expecting something more and wanting something more.

And then thinking that you deserve more.

And that mindset also keeps you from.

Not only appreciating everything that's right in front of you, like the day that you have, but it also makes you.

Somehow it prevents you from realizing you can create it.

Like, you can learn how to wake.

Up every day and be grateful for this day and just put your head.

Down and do the work to create what you want.

Be thankful what you do have. Don't think about what you wish you had. I'll always remember, and I think this is true of every little, every child. My mother used to say, you know.

You'Re going to wish your life away.

Because we'd say, oh, I wish I.

Could have, I wish I could do.

I wish I could go. As a child, we're always wishing. She said, you're going to wish your life away. Well, what are you wishing for?

Just be grateful for what you have right this minute because who knows?

What you're wishing for might not be right anyhow.

It's true. It's true.

And as soon as you wish for.

Something else, you're rejecting what you have.

Exactly.

Wow.

Is there anything else that you want to share or that you can think.

Of or mistakes that you think people make?

I think one of the things that I think about when we talk about staying in the moment is that.

We.

Don'T realize that the process that we're.

Going through in life is really the most exhilarating.

The best part is the process. It's not getting there so often. Whether you're building a house or whether you're going on vacation, it's the process you think about, oh, my gosh. When we go, we're going to do a dude ranch and we're going to do this and we're going to do that. It's the anticipation that's so exciting.

Right?

And then once you're there, it's like, oh, okay.

So it's the wishing.

Don't wish for something else.

Just be so thankful for what you have right now. Judy Robbins, everybody.

She's going to be 86 and she's dropping knowledge. Go, Judy.

I love you.

I love you. I love you.

I love you too, darling.

Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe, because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe. Bye.