#52 Shawn Stevenson on How We’re Made of the Food We Eat
The Darin Olien Show- 1,150 views
- 5 Jan 2021
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Well, I don’t think we realize just how true that is. Unfortunately, our society has made it nearly impossible to focus on whole, clean foods. Instead, cheap, processed, empty-calorie foods are plentiful. But when you understand that, literally, every bite you take becomes your body, it’s easier to make the necessary changes for optimal health. WELCOME TO THE DARIN OLIEN SHOW. I’m Darin Olien, the “superfood hunter.” On this podcast, you’ll hear honest conversations with extraordinary people that inspire me. I hope that through their knowledge and unique perspectives, they’ll inspire you, too. Although our ideas and approaches to life may differ, our ultimate goal is the same. We want to save the planet. So we’re going to try, one conversation at a time. If you’re interested in expanding your view of the world while learning new angles on health and nutrition, you’re at the right place. Shawn Stevenson was told at 20 years old that he had an incurable bone disease. Shawn Stevenson is the author of the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter, and the newly released book Eat Smarter. He’s also the creator and host of The Model Health Show, one of the top Health podcasts in the United States. Shawn graduated from the University of Missouri- St. Louis after studying business, biology and nutritional science. He went on to found Advanced Integrative Health Alliance. This amazing company provides health and wellness services for people and organizations all over the world. Shawn’s work in the wellness sector has led to features in Forbes, The New York Times, Muscle & Fitness, ABC, ESPN and many more. But before all this success, Shawn was just a kid growing up in Missouri with little access to healthy food. Surrounded by every fast food franchise you can imagine, and a hardworking mom that had to work night shifts to keep him fed on whatever they could afford, he just didn’t know any other way. That’s why when he was diagnosed with Degenerative Bone Disease at 20 years old, he believed the doctor when he said there was nothing he could do. He had no idea his poor diet was inhibiting his body’s ability to heal. How would he? This isn’t something they teach in school. After popping pills, losing sleep night after night and just feeling incredibly defeated, he finally asked himself the question that changed everything. “What can I do to get better?” Suddenly, his entire attitude and perspective shifted. His health wasn’t in the doctors’ hands anymore. It was in his. That was the beginning of his journey into discovering the amazing healing power of whole foods. In this conversation, Shawn breaks down how everything we eat shapes how our body functions. In his straightforward, sometimes sarcastic, always genuine way, he gets to the very heart of why every single person should care more about how we think about food in this country. We get into how government subsidies have made cheap processed food affordable, while the good healthy stuff remains out of reach to those that need it most. And Shawn tells us all about his new book and the amazing campaigns he has planned for it. This is a great episode for anyone looking to dig a little deeper into healing their bodies with food. Other topics in this episode: The intelligence of food Shawn’s struggles with bone pain The “nocebo effect” How switching the narrative retrains our brain Shawn’s first experience with Wild Oats Sleep and nutrition How the food we eat becomes our bodies The link between diet and chronic disease Why in the world is a happy meal the same price as an avocado?? The role of NK cells in the body The magic of melatonin What the heck is HEC? Links & Resources: Shawn on Instagram The Model Health Show on Facebook Buy Eat Smarter Buy Sleep Smarter The Model Health Show Podcast Nutrition and Chronic Conditions Study Download Darin’s amazing new lifestyle app and get 3 days free at 121Tribe.com For amazing skin using an all-natural serum made with wild-harvested ingredients, get Calera Lab’s “The Good”, the only skincare product I use. Use code “DARIN” for 20% off your first order! The Darin Olien Show is produced by the team at Must Amplify. If you’re looking to give a voice to your brand and make sure that it’s heard by the right people, head to www.mustamplify.com/darin to see what Amplify can do for you
You are listening to the Derrinallum Show. I'm Daryn. I spent the last 20 years devoted to improving health, protecting the environment and finding ways to live a more sustainable life. In this podcast, I have honest conversations with people that inspire me. I hope that through their knowledge and unique perspectives, they'll inspire you to. We talk about all kinds of topics from amping up your diets to improving your well-being to the mind blowing stories behind the human experience and the people that are striving to save us and our incredible planet.
We've investigated some of life's fatal conveniences. You know, those things that we are told might be good for us, but totally aren't. So here's to making better choices and the small tweaks in your life that amount to big changes for you and the people around you and the planet. Let's do this. This is my show, The Derrinallum Show. Everybody, welcome to the show, thanks for tune in, I appreciate your time, I appreciate your energy that you've been given to the show.
And listen, if things resonate with you. Make sure to share it naturally to other people, because this is the way we're supposed to get out information now, because, you know, we can't trust all of these same platforms anymore. We just can't like I don't care what side of the aisle on it you are, that there's just some gnarly corruption. And I don't I don't dig it, man. I don't dig it. But I love to be able to sit down with great people, with their hearts in place and moving forward in their lives and effecting change.
There's no one greater that's contributing to this than Shawn Stephenson. There's a lot of great people out there doing great things moving forward. But this dude is also dedicating his life to getting out information. So we kind of spent the afternoon together. He came out, we sat under an oak tree. We've both been meaning to connect with each other for the last couple of years. And we finally did it. And I was kind of blown away. Like he has the number one health podcast in the US, millions of listeners, millions of downloads.
And I was so touched by his commitment, his authenticity, his intelligence. So we started to get into a little bit on the side of like when you see things and peel back the layers, you see that there's agendas going on and that's not cool.
We need to push back. We have allowed, you know, Big Brother and big sister to control some things. We need to start saying, listen, this is our freedom. This is our sovereignty. And we started to dabble into that. You went to the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and studied business. You studied biology and nutritional science. He was a founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a company that provides wellness services for individuals and other organizations.
He's had a whole clinical nutrition background working directly with doctors and people straight on. So he really has an insight into what people are challenged with. You wrote an incredible book way before people were talking to people and talking about sleep like crazy right now. And he actually wrote a book a while back called Sleep Smarter. I encourage you to check that out. But he also wrote a new book that is just released called Eat Smarter. Listen, this is not his point of view necessarily.
It is his point of view based on data that he has gathered clinical data. And this is an important thing to understand because he is digging into that research and putting it in a way that people can understand. He's been featured in Forbes and one of the fast companies, The New York Times, Muscle and Fitness, ABC News, ESPN, all of this stuff. And he is just a solid, solid dude who's caring about you, me in the world at large.
And he's really hitting it. And I really loved sitting down with a brother like this and really no one getting to finally meet him, but also really vibing with his mission. And I'm just going to say it. It's not the last time I'm going to be collaborating with this dude. So I'm really grateful that we were able to sit down and unpack some of the things that he's been working on for twenty plus years. OK, it's kind of incredible background.
He's had to pull up the bootstraps and take a look at his life and take responsibilities, had some really diverse challenges in his life. And I just really appreciate this guy and I know that you will, too. So hook it and hold on and enjoy my good new friend, Sean Stephenson. You know, it's so crazy, and this was all out of St. Louis, Missouri, you know, of course, is the health hub of the universe.
That's sarcasm. But, you know, I'm just I'm very inquisitive person. You know, I think it starts with that. So even one of my big mandates is just to inspire your curiosity, because rather than me doing the David Blaine thing and just trying to convince you, it's just getting you to ask the question within yourself. And once we could do that, man, some magical things would start to happen. And, you know, so much of what I would say is going to be mirrored by what folks are doing.
And, of course, you're doing whether we realize it or not. And one of the big tenets of reality is that food isn't just food, it's information. And every bite of food that we eat, literally. And these are some of the things I just integrated throughout the pages of Eat Smarter, the new book, Neutra Genomics Neutra Genetics, literally is determining what your genes are doing. You know, this is such a massively powerful thing. And I grew up and I think part of what has made it to where I've seen this level of like all these different cool things have happened.
You know, in the space of my last book, Sleep Smarter became international bestsellers, the firstly wellness book to become an international bestseller, translated like 20 different countries. And, you know, it's kind of just it was the first domino in this wave of like I just did a I just did a talk for Tom Brady's TB 12 company. They've got like sleep wellness coaches. This didn't exist. And many of these folks know the data, like they use my language that I really pushed into the lexicon.
But they don't know me. They don't know where it came from. And that's the power of books have a reality to them. You know, even though we have all these other sources of communication, it's still one of those really cool ones. But so even that becoming a possibility, I think I'm good at it because of how terrible my health and my exposure was growing up. You know, when I when I say I eat fast food every day and I literally mean that unless I didn't have the money and I just had to eat ramen noodles when I was in college, you know, when I at the age of twenty.
Because I was making my body out of these things, which was just I was inundated in my environment when I went outside of my door, I lived in Ferguson, Missouri. When I went outside the apartment complex, the first thing I see is a liquor store. The second thing I see Lee's chicken, I see a fried fish place. I see Chinese food restaurant. But this is not Chinese food restaurant that you think this is like bulletproof glass, you know, fried extra, extra, extra, hard, extra fried.
And, you know, Papa John's Domino's, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, a steak and shake if you want to get fancy. Arby's, Krispy Kreme, another Chinese food. I'm just going down the block here as Taco Bell. You know, the list goes on and on and on. And these are just this was all within a mile, mile and a half. All right. So I didn't know that there was anything else but this.
You know, I just thought food was just stuff you eat and so. Making my body out of these things, literally determining what my genes are doing, I had turned on programs to basically they were recycling me, you know, and at the age of 20, I was diagnosed with a degenerative disc disease and degenerative bone disease. I broke my hip when I was at track practice just running because my bones were so brittle. Yeah. And this I was 15 and I ran a four or five forty yard dash, which is like NFL Times at 15.
Yeah, that was my way out. Like from my environment. Where I come from is either sports or drugs. You know, it's basically those are my my two heroes, like the guys who made it through sports and the drug dealers in the neighborhood. You know, they had the nice car. They seemed like they had stuff, you know, and that's all you want to do is just have some stuff. But, you know, my way, I was going to be a professional athlete.
Unfortunately, again, I had some early exposure living with my grandmother and like a nice kind of quiet place for a couple of years. And so I got exposure to she. I think she I don't know if some part is nature, nurture, but that inquisitive nature. I don't know if it was just there, but she really inspired it. I just remember it being on there and her I had this little Gaffield writing book and so it was like teaching me how to do like cursive and stuff.
And I was like, I can make. Stories like I can make up anything I want and I just remember that curiosity turning on there and it's like imagination older at than time. I was about seven. I was seven years old. I distinctly remember sitting at my little I had like a little kiddie table, that red chair doing the gaffield, you know, writing and just having this insight, like I can make whatever I want real, you know.
Wow.
And it's a pretty profound awareness. But the world, of course, can, like, suppress it. It's still it's there and all of us, you know. And so when I carried that love of learning. Even though it can get manipulated, I knew how to do the thing like, OK, this is the Targaryen theorem, you know, whatever, like, OK, so I did really well in school. It was easy. I didn't really try, but there was nothing and I fell in love with except, you know, writing was was really my thing.
And so, you know, cut to the story, getting diagnosed with this so-called incurable disease, not knowing I'm making my body out of the worst possible substances possible and. Getting that diagnosis at 20, the physician for my MRI up and he told me that I had the spine of an 80 year old man when he was like, I'm 20. I'm just in there like, OK, so how do we fix this? I got some leg pain because I didn't know it was connected to my back.
And he tells me this like it really turned the entire universe upside down. And the most powerful thing that he said, whether it's positive or not, is he told me that this is incurable and there's nothing you can do about it. He wasn't trying to be malicious. He was just telling me what he believed, what he believed. And that's the nocebo effect, which I talk about in the book, in the science on it is it's mind blowing.
How powerful. And we can come back and talk about this, how our belief about eating something, how it affects what our hormones do. All right. But I believed him. And for the next two years, I just believed him that this is it. There's nothing I can do to change. He's the authority figure. He knows better than me. This is the this is very important for all of us to give up power, give our power away.
People in this position be very cognizant of those things and what you allow in, because from that moment there was of course, there's this thing in me that something isn't right. But it's like I feel like a lot of people are experiencing that right now. Something's not right. But I believe this. Right.
And so I have a person, because they're in this position, they must be saying they couldn't possibly be saying something that would harm me. Exactly right. They couldn't possibly be. And that's that's the dangerous thing, that if we going back to the first thing, if we stop asking questions. Then then we're we're doomed to express that which was impressed upon us based on someone's point of view, this is so powerful. And again, all of these ideas now are going to be in Target stores across Middle America, you know, everywhere in America, you know, in Target.
And they have this camp awareness campaign with each mortar. And these ideas are going to be accessible to more people because I talk about the power of questions. Our brains, the human brain is really like a survival mechanism and it runs on questions. And so there's a process called instinctive elaboration. When you called yourself a question, your brain has no no choice but to find an answer to it. And the problem, the power is that. But the problem is we are often subconsciously, unconsciously asking the same questions over and over and over again.
When I got that diagnosis and for the next two years, when I was gaining all this weight, when I got into so like chronic debilitating pain, I couldn't sleep at night. I had to take all these different drugs just to sleep. I was habitually asking why me? And I also bitterly asking, why won't anybody help me? Just over and over and over again, I was a friend, would refer to another doctor and I go, there they are amazing.
I go and see them even though they might. Well, they tell me the same thing. I'm sorry, son. This is incurable. Here's another prescription. They kept adding to my prescriptions and I got Celebrex added to the mix and then they would also diagnose and give me the recommendation of bedrest. What each I saw four physicians over the course, two years, every time I saw a new physician and I could walk there, I could walk, I heard, but I could walk.
Why would they tell me bedrest? Because not only is my spine going to atrophy, not everything is, you know, and so they were giving me psychologically a permission slip to not do anything, you know, and just watching my health degrade. And at that point, man, and this is the this is where everything turned was actually a question I saw the most recent, you know, the last physician. He told me the same thing. And I was sitting on my bed, my mattress on the floor, Ferguson, Missouri, look to take my pills so I can knock myself out and get some sleep.
And it hit me like. He's not it's not that they're not well-meaning, but I'm just like he's not thinking about me right now, he's probably with his family having a nice dinner, you know, but he's told me I have to suffer for the rest of my life. And this was the first time I asked a different question. I ask, what can I do to get better? Boom. And that changed everything because now my brain is seeking out, so when I'm asking why me, my brain is seeking out all the reasons why my life is shitty, right.
When I say, why won't somebody help me? It's looking for all the reasons why I'm terrible in relationships.
The list of victim now just gets further amplified by those questions. Yeah. And how isolated I am. It all gets magnified by asking this empowering question. I started to seek look for answers, you know, because there can't be a problem without a solution. There's like it's two sides of the same coin. It it exists. And so that was I slept through the night for the first time, like could just ask and it just I felt like I had a purpose.
And the next day I put my investigative powers I was wasting in college writing these stupid ass papers into finding how I can get healthier, you know, and that set me on an incredible journey, you know, like, for example, in another question I asked, OK, my spine is deteriorating, deteriorating. My disk, you know, were two herniated disc, severely herniated. They were degenerated. They look like little crispy pieces of baloney on the MRI.
You know, I ask, OK, what are my disk made of? You know, that's like and I found out that there's there all of these compounds I never heard of. And I'm like third year in college right now. I take nutritional science and taking all of these classes biology, but I was miseducated. I wasn't taught about things that actually were viscerally connected to me. And so I was just really disenchanted by the whole thing. And so I found out, for example, my bone density because of marketing.
I'm like calcium. You got the milk mustache. All I need is guzzling milk every day as part of my shitty diet with along with my three bowls of, you know, Fruit Loops, fortified Fruit Loops. Yeah, it's four to five vitamins and minerals healthy for your kids. Right. But now I find out silica, magnesium. I found out omega 3s were important in increasing your bone density. And I was just like, I'm not getting this shit anywhere in my Suneet D and, you know, my diet, my fast food, my drive thru window diet, basically.
And the first step and I'll just be one hundred here. The first thing I did was I had a friend and this is the power of exposure and the transformative power of that. So even the folks that right now are like locked in on their belief, that might be very, very untrue about what's happening in the world. If they're around you, they can't help but to have their ideas start to change. We are a product of our environment, but we're also creators of our environments as well, if we are aware.
But I had a friend this is a woman that I was, you know, hanging out with from time to time.
And she was a chiropractor. And I had no I didn't know what that meant. I just I was like, why? Why are you doing that to each other? You know, like and she took me to Wild Oats. And this was after I asked if I had known her for years. I had known her for a couple of years at that point. This is the first one to ask that question. Within a week she took me there and I walk in.
It's just like, what the hell is the grass inside here like? So Wild Oats for everyone listening that it actually started in Boulder, moved to must move to I don't know either, but it moved to the hub of health of the world, St. Louis, Missouri. Many of you who follow me know I've spent most of my life searching for the healthiest foods on the planet. If you look hard enough, there are a few unknown, extraordinary foods around the world that people still don't know about.
And a few years ago, I came across my favorite superfood discovery of all time verrucas nuts. When I first tasted them, my eyes lit up. The taste alone just absolutely blew me away. But after sending them to the lab, which I do and getting all the tests, I realized they're the healthiest nuts on the planet like no other nut even compares. They have like an unusually high amount of fiber and they're off the charts in super high antioxidants and have fewer calories than any other nut.
Like it's jam packed with micronutrients. But they're not just good for you. They're really good for the planet. Most other nuts require millions of gallons of irrigated water, but verruca trees require no artificial irrigation. Brewskis are truly good for you, good for the planet. And good for the world community. It's a win all the way around, I really think you'll love them. So I'm giving all of my listeners 15 percent off by going to Barracas Dotcom backslash, Daryn.
That's B a r u k a s dot com backslash, Daryn. D a r i and I know you will enjoy. But here's what I did, what first up was I became a natural coba, and I find out these nutrients make up the thing and I'm like this allopathic thinking pill for every ill. Let me take this supplement, this supplement. Fortunately, I made the transition quickly to make food is where food first, you know, because there's an intelligence there.
And what I later uncovered and what I'm trying to bring even now, making it into the popular lexicon. There isn't just one vitamin C, there's many types, there's isn't just one magnesium, there's many types, there isn't just one V12 like the list goes on to make it threes. This is how powerful food is when you get that isolated synthetic supplement. Is that even the one your body needs? Food has the intelligence and all the cofactors, the bio potentiator, all the things that make your body do the thing, you know.
So I start to identify those foods, flooding my tissues with all the raw materials my body needed. And it was I don't use this word lightly, but I think it's appropriate. It was miraculous. And how quickly I got better, I started to sleep better. And if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. Starts sleep better. I can move. I was out of pain. Eventually I got a scan and it was nine months later completely reversed a condition.
You know, the light was shining through my MRI, through the disc. And I remember the physician standing there with me. I was just like stroking his chin, just looking at it like whatever you're doing, keep doing it. Here's one of the big truths and one of the things that I'm going to keep directing people's attention to. We are the sickest nation in the history of humanity, self-inflicted here in the United States, we are we are so good at being sick, it's become conditioned to be normal.
Here in the United States, over 200 million Americans are overweight or obese, 43 percent clinically obese. Within the next few years, it's going to be 50 percent clinically obese. I come from this. This is my family. I've lost so many people to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity. Hundred thousand people every year die in relationship to obesity. Sixty percent of Americans have some degree of heart disease and hardening of the arteries is a ticking time bomb.
One hundred thirty five million Americans are diabetic or pre-bid prediabetic. Right now, it does it like that number one hundred thirty five. It makes no sense. Right. And on top of that, 115 million Americans are regularly sleep deprived. Now, here's the most incredible part of all of this. 70 percent of our citizens are already on pharmaceutical drugs. Why isn't helping? Everything keeps getting worse. Heart disease worse, cancer worse, diabetes worse, Alzheimer's worse.
The list goes on and on everything. And yet we continue to invest our time and attention and resources into conventional medicine, which last year four trillion dollars are put into the system that continues to churn out piss poor results. Not only that, and anybody can look this up, Johns Hopkins, they had to dig around the researchers because of the coding is so difficult to catch these things. The number one cause of death every year in the United States in recent history is heart disease.
Number two, cause of death every year is cancer. Number three, cause of death every year in recent years is iatrogenic. This position created illness, medical error, third leading cause of death. And we act as if it's not a thing. Right. And I would argue it's the first because it's so terrible and even encouraging of the first two. We have to wake up because our system is is literally built on a model of a model is only as good as the underlying presumption.
It's built on a model that's treating symptoms and not looking at what's causing the disease. I know the top guys now like I know the top cardiologist, the top gastroenterologist, like in the world. My friend, incredible gastroenterologist, went to school for 60 years to do this shit he's doing right. He his focus is on the treatment of organs related to the digestion, assimilation and elimination of food. He treats organs that handle food. And yet in 16 years, he got two weeks of education on food.
And it wasn't like some real shit, it was like, here's what to do if your patient has a rare, benign deficiency, you know, and he shared this with me and I'm just like, perfect example. This is what the problem is. Your gastrointestinal tract is made of the food you eat. Your heart cardiologist, it's made of the food you eat, the arteries are made from the food you eat, the blood running through it made from the food you eat, it's the number one thing.
And yet they don't get any education on it. Yeah, our system is massively flawed, but we can change it. This is what, again, being at this time, I think we have such an opportunity because things are shaken up right now to change it and eat smarter coming at this time. It's like a tenet is like a mandate to eat smarter.
Absolutely. Yeah, it's. You know, you just hate to realize, well, you know, it's like I hope that people realize that there's these conflicts of interest that are all over the place. They don't make money on you eating vegetables off your land. They just don't. And empowerment. And for you to ask those questions is is detrimental to their bottom lines. And so, you know, I don't know why it takes so much for people to realize that and those authorities, but we can get people to use their instinctual.
Beautiful, powerful, commonsense align ourselves with the sun, the clean air, low toxicity of modern inconveniences and and then build ourselves up back up again with. Our first line of defense, what we're putting in our mouth, I don't know why that is not the captain obvious of every human on the planet. Water, air, food, breathing, clean food, whole food. Like, why is that not a thing? And when you look at all these stats, we blow that number off.
If you actually take those numbers in and realize we're not educating ourselves and how to to change how we're. Looking at health care and how we're taking care of our own people, you have to then contend with the systems and start to realize when you're asking those questions, these systems are not supporting that new premise of eating well.
Let's talk about these systems. All right. So in the beautiful part is the data exists again, but we're going to, like, really lean into it in twenty, twenty one, like, really make sure that this becomes more common knowledge. So the Journal of the American Medical Association did a huge meta analysis and they uncovered that poor diet. This was in twenty eighteen. Poor diet is the number one cause of our chronic diseases, which is no surprise.
But this prestigious peer review journal highlighting this should be a big deal. Would be a poor diet is the number one cause. And also very early on in this pandemic experience, the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at what was happening in New York City. They found that the three major comorbidities or also contributors to severe infections, hypertension, diabetes and obesity. All right. What are these caused by primarily poor diet? So why what's happening with the system that allows this to be a thing and why are we not addressing it?
So one of the things that I highlight in the book, by the way, the book is fun. All right. So it's not just like dark, you know, but I take people through different adventures and different stories, but we're just kind of in this topic right now. So so I'll share it. But, you know, in this book, we actually take them behind the scenes and teach them how their metabolism actually works, foods involved in different hormones that do the processes, you know, shuttling the triglycerides over to the mitochondria.
We take them on the adventure. But one of the things that I highlight is how do we fix this? Like what's happening, what's making this what it is today? And here's the truth now. The United States government provides hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for crops that largely end up coming through the drive thru window. All right, hundreds of billions of dollars. And so these agricultural crops, we're talking mainly like corn, which is big for high fructose corn syrup, wheat, soy, et cetera, factory farming, subsidized meat production or quality meat, all that stuff.
Now, here's what's interesting. There was an incredible peer reviewed study that wanted to track the pathway of consumption of these government subsidized foods. Does this actually impact the health of the citizens? And what they discovered was the folks who had the highest intake of these government subsidized foods had a 40 percent increased incidence of being obese. Direct one to one thing. Right. We've got like these are the foods our government is literally investing in for your ass in here.
We know that this is going to radically increase your incidence of being obese. It's not a joke. We've got the numbers and the question is why? Why would our government do that? And when I say our government, I mean, we are paying for that shit. We are paying to make those crops. And it might have even very I always take a step back and try to have a better perspective and not say this is blatantly like Dr. Evil stuff.
But, you know, we started with a very good intention, right. Of trying to feed citizens for sure. But that ratio, this is mainly driven by massive food companies, processed food companies and lobbyists who are vying for those dollars to make sure they continue to stay funneled into the ones that pay out the most for folks who are invested in these processed food companies, these multi, multi, multibillion dollar companies. And so. The the the subsidies going to folks who are growing fruits and vegetables is almost nothing.
Hundreds of billions of dollars going into these, you know, massive commodity crops and it keeps and it keeps these fast food things like 99 cent burgers and all that where it all comes out. And then that's where you get to have these, quote unquote, cheap meals, because maybe the government is also suppressing you in certain ways. And you can't you haven't been able to make the kind of money you want or whatever. And you know, well, I have to feed my family.
This is where I come from there. And this is exactly I come from this. You know, we were on food stamps, which got food from food pantries. When we can come across, my mother would sell her blood to get twenty dollars so she could feed us. And so and even here in this. So some folks might be like, why are we on food stamps? Why don't you guys just work harder? My mother did. I mean, she literally she worked overnight at a convenience store, became the manager.
And because of the environment that we're in, one night somebody tried to rob her and she was stabbed eight times. What, and she was able to defend herself and subdue him until the police came from a very young man. Like I'm from a very, very tough, aggressive family, you know. But anyways and when she went to the doctor, you know, to get the stitches and all that stuff, the doctor told her that if it wasn't for all your excess weight, you would have died.
You being a heavy woman saved your life. What do you think that does in her psychology now? It links the live, literally living and that fear her protection, of course. And so many other millions and millions of people are battling. Trying to, quote, lose weight, but this is emotionally driven thing, it's become a protective mechanism and nobody's addressing this either. But so we the whole like, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. There is a part of that personal responsibility.
And in the book I go through that the bottom up things we can do, personal responsibility, but also top down changes that makes it actually doable and accessible for people. And so being on these different foods, if my mom got that 20 dollars from selling her blood, she's not going to get an organic rotisserie and some asparagus and she's going to go to fast food to feed all three of her kids for ten dollars. When we were really balling out, though, and I can get a Happy Meal that Happy Meals to 99 man burger fries drink and a fucking toy for two ninety nine, an avocado cost to 99.
How is that possible to create that burger. And in the fries and the even the toy. These things are so cost intensive to create even a soda to create a hamburger. The processing involved the food procurement, the marketing, the sales and distribution. The packaging costs so much money and. A wholefood falls off the tree, technically speaking, it makes no sense that this is, but it's because of the investment by our own government making those foods cheap.
So what do you think she's going to do? What do you think we're all going to do? We're going to we're trying to feed our family, get four, get a full meal.
This whole system has to change, and once we can create some, again, top down changes to make these other real foods accessible and available and even attractive, that's another thing. The marketing behind, you know, McDonald's, you know, Pepsi, they don't have, you know, LeBron James, you know, for avocados, you know what I'm saying? What if we again, the crazy thing is, I know a lot of these guys. I know a lot of their trainers like real talk.
These guys, they're not in that shit, and if they are like Dwight Howard, one of my really good friends, you actually did one of the endorsements for the book, Dr. Kate Shanahan. She worked with the Lakers for many years. And Dwight Howard, this is back, was first stint with the Lakers. He was massively like he'd like five king sized candy bars a day, like she had to work with the maid because he was hiding them.
You know, he's so addicted. But he's also had this proclivity towards these injuries. Right. But he and he just he circled back and came back with the team this past year. They won a championship. But anyway, she really worked to optimize his nutrition. And pretty much all professional teams have this now. You know, it's it's a thing. But if we can get more these voices to not lower their standards and understand, they don't know oftentimes that Pepsi is like damaging, you know, their their communities.
And so. The more that we can get these folks on board, too, because unfortunately, even unfortunately. I would want to fight against some of these things, but it's just the nature of humanity. For many years we look to the warrior, we look to, you know, that a champion over there, we we look to the jester or the king. And so. Let's use it to our advantage and the same thing, I talked about it like four years, I was trying to get people not to go to McDonald's or fast food.
Right. But then I saw the data and I was like 84 million people go to fast food every day here in America. I'm trying I'm trying to, like, get people to know we need to shift the environment that they're going into, I was very much against McDonnell and Kale to their smoothies. Now, it's like at that damn kale, you know, and let's, like, upgrade the ingredients that they're serving Russia. Take out the shit that's damaging us and let's just make the offerings better.
So for years, maybe all most of my life, people have been asking me what kind of foods you eat, what kind of exercises do do, what kind of water should I drink, all of these things and so much more we put into a 21 day program. So that can take you through a theme every day of knowledge, action, and then eating this delicious meals, working out, getting support, anchoring in these new habits. So you can do what?
So that you can kick ass. So you have the energy, the vitality to live the kind of life that you really want. That's what it's all about. So all in this app, we have grocery lists, we have education about real hydration and what greater oxygenation and the balance of organization. All of these things we are diving into as you're heading down this hero's journey of implementation into a new life to give you the kind of life that you actually want.
So join my tribe. All you have to do is go to one to one tribe, dotcom, sign up and you get three free days. Join me on this hero's journey. Join the tribe. I want to talk about psychology side and the food side, but also the sleep side you have you're such an expert in that side of things. And and so unpack some of your research around sleep, health, food, all of that stuff, because, I mean, it's something I take very personally.
And obviously, if you can't sleep, you're. Repair your mood, your stress, everything is connected. You know what, one of the things the first thing that I do is always help to anchor in why it matters, you know? And so, again, World Health Organization, you know, they did a meta analysis and they found that folks who are sleep deprived have about a two times greater incidence of having a heart attack, four times greater incidence of having a stroke.
And what is their definition of sleep deprivation for hours? All right. So for four hours, total sleep, just an average of four hours, which is not it's not that uncommon, unfortunately. Now, that's that looks like an extreme case. All right. That does look like an extreme case. But coupled with more recent data that we have, finding that just one night of poor sleep quality, one night of sleep deprivation can effectively make you your insulin sensitivity, make it look like your type two diabetic.
You know, it can really disrupt your blood sugar and your immune system, too. Oh, yeah. So relations of your it's another one of the things I talked about this was in psycho neuro immunology found that just one night's sleep deprivation dramatically suppresses your immune system and increases your likelihood of contracting an infection. Yeah. All right. And specifically, 30 percent or some crazy stat, the specific one that they found was it really creates disruption to your natural killer cells.
And in this particular virus, the FDA had actually fast tracked a drug that targets our natural killer cells because it was found in cells are so effective at killing sars-cov-2 infected cells. But you won't hear that shit and you can. Another study, this Appalachian State University, just go for a walk. A short walk was found to immediately boost immune parameters, most notably for your ENC cells. But again, if they're jumping on TV saying, OK, wear a mask, you should also say make sure you get your 20 minute walk in today.
America, it's the number one thing that's going to support your immune system, which is the number one thing that is going to protect you. And we can we see the numbers right now. We're at about 70 million confirmed cases. And even the testing, of course, has many questions there. But if that's the case with about one point six million folks have lost their lives. That's about 68 million people who didn't. Right, nobody's talking about that there is no survival taker on the screen and the question is.
How did it happen, how do they survive? What was it? Did they. Was it a transfusion? No, their immune system just did what it's designed to do. But when we suppress it, that's the thing, too, when we just like perfectly healthy people as well. You don't know, because you and I even we can be as healthy as just absolute model of what that is. But then we get excessively stressed, we're sleep deprived.
Whatever we can get, we can get very sick. We can even die and we can even die from things we're carrying around with us right now. We all carry around pathogenic organisms, you know, and we think we could catch a bug. A lot of times it's shit you're carrying already. They're called opportunistic, but they're also there because they serve a purpose through our evolution. They could be helping to make between you for you. You know what?
If that ratio gets skewed because of the way you're living, they could take you down. So on that front with sleep. And again, this was like 2013, 2014, when I really was getting this information out. And since then, many books have come. But again, this was a fact. This is so crazy to say this stuff. I just I didn't eat. It wasn't my intention. I was just like, this is not being talked about, you know, and like people coming into my office and there without got their nutrition dialed in, like for them, not anybody else for them.
And, you know, we're their exercise of point, but they're not getting their blood sugar, not normalizing or, you know, they're still their blood pressure still just way too high. I started asking people about their sleep. It took years in practice.
And the questions the question I couldn't believe what people are telling me, like my I part of what he told me was getting my sleep together. But I want to sleep is good. You never really think about it. Right. But I know that people want change, but they don't want to change that much. So I knew that. And when I hear these stories of like let me look at the data, find some simple things that are clinically proven to improve their sleep efficiency, I'm not going to tell them to sleep more.
And once we did that, once people's sleep improvement, finally the weight came off. Finally their blood sugar normalized. Finally their blood pressure normalized. The list goes on and on and on. And so. Here's the thing, so I've put the date out on, you know, the relationship with the light, you know, this, quote, light pollution today and the data around, you know, body temperature, you know, this thermal regulation and getting a room the right, all of these different external things, we could do that definitely help.
But here's the thing. You could have the perfect most optimized pillow and all the different blue, like blocking things. But if you don't have the building blocks of your sleep related hormones, the neurotransmitters, you're missing the point. And so that's what I focus on and eat smarter. There's a chapter chapter called Edible Sleep, and we're looking at the specific nutrients that actually build your sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters. I've seen this time and time again when you know somebody they're diagnosed with insomnia, struggling with it for years and doing all the technical stuff.
But I just find out, like they have a vitamin C deficiency, you get that fixed. And this is, again, peer reviewed journals. PLoS One, for example, found that folks who are deficient in vitamin C have much more interrupted sleep. So they have a tendency towards waking up more often. And by getting those numbers up for folks in the study, they were able to normalize their sleep quality. So that's one another one. That's kind of I mean, there's a whole list, but another one is just coming up for me when I say specific building blocks is tryptophan, so.
Right. This essential amino acid and it's abundant in different foods from pumpkin seeds to turkey, depending on what diet framework you look to spirulina, there's a bunch of places you can find it. That's good. But if you're not proactively getting these things in, it's kind of easy to become deficient on it because it does a lot of other things besides sleep. A tryptophan is a building block for serotonin, which is a building block for melatonin. Right.
And so if you're deficient in the core thing, we can have some issues with your with your sleep quality. By the way, melatonin is not a sleep hormone. That's a big misnomer. It's. It's a master control of your circadian rhythm, it's a master controller of your biological clock, all of our cells are lined up with nature and it's always trying to sync up and is determining when every other hormone is getting produced. That's how powerful melatonin is, is that something is going to happen as we take as a supplement, or do you want to make sure your body's producing it adequately for yourself?
And so here's what I was taught in school. When we talked about melatonin, I was taught that is produced in your pineal gland. Turn the page, that was it, end of story right today, we know that there's 400 times more melatonin in your gut than in your brain. Wow. All right. And researchers at Caltech found that there are specific gut bacteria communicate with cells that produce these enteric chromatin cells, you know, that produce your sleep related hormones or neurotransmitters, your bacteria.
Communicating with these guys which are feeding your bacteria inherently controls your sleep. It is like they are a master controller. And a lot of folks at this point, of course, is heard that, you know, upwards of 80 and even upwards of 90 percent of your serotonin is in your gut, too. And we think it's a head thing, like feeling good. Right. But it's that gut brain connection. And so the environment in that micro microbiome, we focus a lot on that in Eat Smarter, but in a way that is very practical to this thing, to this thing.
So we got to make sure we're not. The biggest thing is removing the things, hurting the microbiome. Right? That's the biggest thing. We take all the supplements you want, but if you don't remove the problem. And so last point here. In this front with, you know, edible sleep, so again, there's a list tryptophan mentioned vitamin C briefly, this might be. If I if I had to make a wager, this is the one that for the greatest amount of people makes the biggest difference, and it's magnesium and it's because it is also just so happens to be the number one mineral deficiency.
And in our society, about 60 percent of folks are chronically deficient in. And second, yeah, very close. It's like second or third. But magnesium, here's the thing. Back, this was just two years ago, and I would share the data that we had, it was responsible over three hundred fifty biochemical processes. Now we found is over 600 biochemical processes that require magnesium. And that means at 600 things your body can't do or can't do properly when you're deficient in it.
In many of these are in response or in relationship to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system managing those two, especially the parasympathetic tone. And so when you're deficient, so it's also well known to be like kind of this anti stress mineral rights kind of labels. We put on the biggest label here. How much stress are we dealing with today? You feel me like it's so much stress, it just saps your system of magnesium so chronically in that stress so much you're not even conscious of it.
But just being in two thousand twenty, you're just living in the stress pool. And chances are you are deficient in this in this mineral. We need to be proactive about it. Always food first for me, anything that's a dense green food is going to be a good source of magnesium. Super dark chocolate. Oh yeah, chocolate as well. Funny enough. And iron too is in that camp. And tryptophan chocolate is tryptophan to so funny, you know.
But, you know, this is one that even in my practice I would have folks supplement with. I'm not a big supplement should supplement. Yeah. You know, but this one can be helpful, especially stressful times, and especially just to get your sleep back on point. So how do we identify when someone when someone's listening to right now and because so many stressors in our lighter and their chronic and they're persistent.
So how do we identify that we're stressed and that under that stress, help eating in general under stress is not a good idea. Right. But then eating your pleasure foods, how do you identify that stress? You think the first thing is being aware of what our overall stress load is this term? Yeah, because everything adds on to your when we're talking about stress, we're really talking about the management of our nervous system and external internal stressors and that integration with your endocrine system.
Right. Really happening with your hypothalamus. So again, work stress is one thing, but then you have relationship stress, you have exercise. Stress could be a good stress or medic stressor. You get the benefits when you heal from it. You know, again, as healthy as we might be, we can go and do a 30 minute intense workout and then go get a blood and hormone panel done. And we're going to look like we're two fucked up people.
Our blood sugar is going to be this dysfunctional. Stress hormones are going to be elevated. You know, blood pressure is going to be wonky. So many different things and we can get it. We can end up with getting a prescription, you know, and we all we did was work out OK. But so just understand that adds to the stress load. Put that on top. Diet stress, a major stressor in our world today, emotional stress, mental stress, you know, there's just goes on and on and on and on.
So this creates our overall stress, low spiritual stress, you know, feeling disconnected, cut adrift, not feeling like you matter or have a purpose, especially now social stress.
You're not around other humans. We need other humans. We need to be social. That's what our genes expect us to do. Right. So all of those things go to you. If you want a picture like a cranium opening up, that all goes into that overall stress load of a human. So being aware of those components. OK, that's step one. Now, step two, I think this is really summarized by, you know, one of my really good friends I actually mentioned in the book, he's got this marker for his patient of it's like it's checking your heck, you know, make sure your check is in check.
Hunger, energy and cravings. And these are direct feedback mechanisms to tell you something is off. If you're excessively hungry, it's abnormally hungry. Something is wrong. But in our diet paradigm, we've been taught that hunger is actually that's when, you know, weight loss is working. For example, you know, I've had many patients I've worked with who thought that that was a goal. When you're hungry, you're doing it right. This was impressed upon culture by the by the very physician who indoctrinated our population with how important calories are.
Dr. Lou Hunt Peters, she made the switch from food being food to food being numbers. She said you no longer eat food, you eat calories of food. This was the early part of the nineteen hundreds. She sold over two million copies of her book at this time, like everybody who could read had that book.
And so she said, you will no longer eat a slice of bread to eat 100 calories of bread still persists. Yeah, of course. And nobody knows where it comes from. And one of the things we talk about in each one of our epic caloric influences, the things that control the calories do in your body. But she made and it's still true in my nutritional science class, calories are the boss. But it's not Tony Danza. It's not right.
So she also indoctrinated our culture with this idea that. If you're hungry, being hungry is the goal, and this was a time of food rationing, like around World War One, she said that. And I went back and just read the I cannot believe what she was saying, but she said, for every pang of hunger, you feel you should have a double joy knowing you're saving the hunger pangs in another person. And so but the sidebar is she battled with her weight her whole life and she associated footling morality.
That was the first time that it happened widespread. So it's a character defect if you can't manage your health and manage your weight. And she related words like punishment and sin to diet. But anyway, so these these ideas exist and permeate our culture. And so hunger being a goal, no hunger is a signal that you can be hungry. But if it's a chronic, persistent hunger, that's a sign something is wrong. And here's a big tenet to take away from each martyr is that chronic nutrient deficiency leads to chronic hunger.
And again, they should be Captain Obvious, but also chronic nutrient deficiency, at least a chronic overeating. So checking your hunger, if you're abnormally hungry, it might be a sign distressed. It's probably a sign of stress. It's just which type of stress energy. If your energy is off, chances are, especially if you have a baseline understanding connection with your body, something stress in you, something is something's off and your body's giving you feedback.
You need to check in. But we tend to just keep going. We punch the gas down harder. So energy and cravings. All right. Cravings is different from our cravings is like specific. There's something I got to have a salty crunchy or I got I need I need a honey bun, you know, like there's something specific. And what that really is. Again, this has to do with nutrient deficiency largely, but also stress, and I'm saying this because one of the things that I talked about was the science of flavor.
And as we evolved as humans, there's this phenomenon called post ingested feedback. And so when we would eat a natural food through our evolution of our body, our biology is like literally taking notes, like, OK, so I eat. This would just say I found some wild berries, I eat the berries and your body's writing it down like, OK, I got copper, I got some cobalt, I've got some selenium and I got some a couple of amino acids.
And so your body makes an association between that flavor experience and that food. And so whenever we would have a craving, you know, your physiology knows where to go to get it. And there was a great animal studies that found the animals do the same thing. Clearly, we just we are tace have been hijacked by food manufacturers and they're very I mean, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars to just hone in and mess up our ability to, you know, regulate the system.
So. Cravings today, they're going to be unusual. Generally, what we're what we're craving because of that muddying up the waters of that system. And so when we have the cravings come up, it's usually driven by some type of stress, often related to diet, stress, nutrient deficiency. So we get the craving, we get some stuff in our body. It may make us feel happy in this. Again, if we are stressed and you have the glass of wine or you have the, you know, the chocolate, I don't want to again get neurotic about it.
I want us to be aware and also give ourselves permission. But also, how about we upgrade the quality when we do it, you know, all of these things so we can feed into getting back to a healthy baseline?
Yeah, a little extra for that special little treat that you're having and not doing it under duress or lack of this is going to it's also this is going to make me feel better. And that's a dangerous position because again, it's almost like you've given your power away, just like you gave your power away to the doctor when he was saying all that stuff to you in the beginning.
So no one did. Just thanks for coming here. This has been a blast. And I know we're going to get connected on your show soon. I look forward to diving in some more work if you find your book. And when is it coming out? When this comes out, you should be able to go and pick it up nationwide or order it from your favorite retailer, Barnes Noble, Amazon. Books-A-Million all that good stuff. It comes out December 29th.
So we're ending this year on a high note and ushering in some change for twenty twenty one. And as mentioned earlier in the show starting January 3rd kick off the New Year. We are part of a national wellness campaign. We target stores. So the book is going to be in just about every Target store in America and not in the book section is going to have its own like twenty, twenty one wellness display. So definitely these are the moments where we show these big organizations.
This is what we demand. We want information like this big idea, nutrition books like this don't end up in this position. We have to demand more of it. Because the funny thing is, I'm pointing out the problems with the food that they're carrying in that store. But I had I wrote the book, it was such a graceful way that it's it's unassuming. It's not like it's not a threat. It's like we can partner and fix these things, you know?
And so higher ups read the book and they just felt like this was an important message for their customers. So definitely head out to your to Target store order online. This is a book to get a copy from somebody for somebody that you love. Book Club is so many fun tales in the book. So many fun stories are going to be some some moments who laughs at moments. Once you get to chapter one, I promise you, every single page is going to be an aha moment.
And wow, there's there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And this is the time for our citizens to eat smarter and citizens and everyone listening. This is a time to ask good questions and different questions of ourselves and take responsibility. I love it. I love the message. I'm 100 percent behind you in that mission and I will support it and everywhere I can as well. I'm grateful that we got to meet finally and stoked for everything you're doing and everything that you're pushing forward to empower coming from the kid that needed to empower yourself.
And now you're perforating that message to millions. And I'm grateful, man. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate that. What a fantastic episode. So tell me, what is one thing you got out of today's conversation? If this episode struck a chord with you and you want to dive a little deeper into my other conversations with incredible guests, you can head over to my website, Derrinallum Dotcom, for more episodes and in-depth articles. Keep diving, my friends. Keep diving. This episode is produced by my team at Must Amplify, an audio marketing company that specializes in giving a voice to a brand and making sure the right people hear it.
If you would like or are thinking about doing a podcast or even would like a strategy session to add your voice to your brand in a powerful way. Go to w w w dot must amplify dot com backslash. Darren that's w w w must amplify dot com backslash Darren.